This article is part of a series called Seen: Spotlighting Disability Representation in Hollywood. Every month, VisABLE will highlight a person with a disability in Hollywood with the purpose of uplifting their voices and showing the impact people with different abilities have on the industry.
Jamie Nieto is ecstatic about working on his favorite show: Starz’s Power, specifically, Power Book III: Raising Kanan.
His first episode aired on August 14, and soon after, the 46-year-old flew from his home in Los Angeles to New York to begin filming season three.
It’s a reality Nieto wasn’t sure he’d experience.
The two-time Olympian high-jumper had only recently begun producing short films, screenwriting, and acting when a backflip accident left him with an incomplete spinal injury in 2016. Nieto, who was making traction in the entertainment industry, found himself living in a new world: a world with limited mobility.
Despite the accident, he continued to pursue his dream; after a storied career as an Olympic hurdler that began decades prior.
Track and field and high jumping hadn’t always been on Nieto’s radar. In fact, he said, in high school, he hated running. Instead, during his years as a lower classman in Sacramento, California, Nieto played football and basketball. But in his junior year, because of a poor grade, he was disqualified from the basketball team.
“A friend of mine came to me and said ‘you should go out for track and field,’ and I was like, ‘no, I don’t really like running,’” Nieto said. “So he said, ‘But, you can do a high jump and work on your jumping ability and come back and you’ll be dunking on everybody!’
“So I went out and tried a bunch of different events, did the high jump and kind of fell in love. I discovered a new passion.”
Nieto immediately excelled in the sport, even making the California State track meet his first year. He competed for his high school again during his senior year, and was eventually given a scholarship to Sacramento City Junior College for hurdling.
But, Nieto wanted more.
He wanted to be the “best in the nation,” and felt that would only be possible at a Division I university. D1 schools are commonly home to the best athletes in college sports and are normally the choice for student-athletes with aspirations of pursuing their sport professionally.
Nieto worked on his craft and would eventually receive a scholarship to Eastern Michigan University.
“I thought when I got to Eastern Michigan that I was going to be one of the top athletes. It turned out that I was just average. And I felt like the college spent a lot of money on me coming out there and I didn’t want to let them down,” Nieto said. “And so after missing the NCAA my first year, I told the coaches that next year I’m going to be an all-American and I’ll break the school record.”
He did.
That next year, thanks to more discipline and preparation, Nieto would jump a personal best and qualify for the NCAA. Then, he would break the school record for Eastern Michigan.
Eventually, Nieto leaped so high, he was told he could make the Olympics. So, after graduating college in 1999, he attended the 2000 Olympic trials in his hometown.
Unfortunately, he would only place fifth – an incredible feat – but not enough to represent America in the games.
Instead, Nieto moved to the Olympic training center in San Diego, hoping the structure and rigorous routine would prepare him for future Olympic trials.
In 2003, Nieto had a breakthrough, winning the national championships, and eventually placing seven in world championships. And in 2004, at the next Olympic trials in Sacramento, Nieto jumped a personal best, and won in front of his hometown.
He competed in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, where he placed fourth.
Nieto wouldn’t attend the Olympics again until 2012. He attempted to qualify in 2008 but because of a rule change, he wasn’t able to compete.
During the downtime between Olympic games, in 2007, Nieto discovered a new passion: acting and screenwriting. He produced a short film with a friend, and in 2008, he took acting classes. He even wrote and produced a crime-drama web series and in 2010, Nieto booked a role in the faith-based film Encounter.
Although his entertainment career was seemingly beginning, Nieto hadn’t totally lost his ambition to compete again in the Olympics, despite being 35 at the time – an age considered too old for competition.
Nieto would eventually attend the Olympic trials in Oregon where he became the oldest male American high jumper to qualify for an Olympic team. He placed fifth at the 2012 games.
Following every competition, and both Olympic games where Nieto competed, he would do a back flip – it was his trademark. Eventually, a backflip is what would cause his paralysis.
After the 2012 games, Nieto decided to hang up his high jump shoes. He went on to become a coach for college track students, and eventually post collegiate athletes. At the same time, he found success writing sitcoms for a production company, Harvest Studios. It was here, where he was telling a coworker about his back flip abilities and said he’d prove it on video.
While coaching in 2016, Nieto asked one of his students to film his backflip. A few flips into the routine, he would move the wrong way, land on his head, and end up in the emergency room. He was diagnosed with incomplete paralysis.
“My life flashed before my eyes,” Nieto said. “I was having a really hard time breathing because when you bruise your spinal cord, especially that high – between C3 and C4 discs – it affects your diaphragm. And so it was really hard to breathe. I was barely breathing and I thought, ‘I might die out here.’”
After the initial shock, Nieto embraced the experience as a second chance at life and a sign to continue pursuing his passions.
Nieto would work to regain strength, specifically because he wanted to walk his wife down the aisle at their wedding. Because his spinal cord injury was incomplete, although he uses a wheelchair and mobility aids, most of the time, Nieto was able to regain some ability to walk.
After months of grueling practice, exercise, and strength training, Nieto did in fact walk his wife, unassisted down the aisle at their wedding.
Before his paralysis, Nieto was supposed to have a meeting with KMR Talent Agency for his acting career but that meeting was postponed when he was injured. In 2017, to his surprise, a friend mentioned to him that KMR had an exclusive disability department. Nieto would contact them again and eventually sign with the agency.
“I started getting a lot of big auditions and that was kind of nerve wracking,” Nieto laughed. “I was getting auditions for things like CSI, and The Walking Dead.”
In 2019, Nieto booked his first significant role on the Netflix show Away, with Hillary Swank and Josh Charles. He also continued writing for Harvest Studios including on the Bounce Network television show Family Time, where he also played a bartender.
The Covid-19 pandemic halted Hollywood, meaning for a few months, it stopped Nieto’s positive trajectory.
But in 2021, he booked a role on Power.
Nieto’s hope for the future is to keep booking roles, and writing, with the hope to one day own a studio and produce and show-run his own content to employ more people with disabilities.
“I definitely would love to see more roles for people with disabilities,” Nieto said. “Everything that I write now, for the most part, somebody with a disability is in there and I consciously do that just because there’s not a lot of people out there doing that.
“I believe that If I am able to write for a movie or a TV show or something like that, hopefully I’m going to be able to get a person with a disability in there.”