My sister [Linda Wallem, co-creator of Nurse Jackie] took me out to lunch before Season 2 and said, “We’re thinking about incorporating your struggles with diabetes into Thor’s character, specifically about losing your vision. How would you feel about that? We want to make it authentic, and we’re going to check with you every step of the way about how to portray this.”

Initially, the thought of reliving it all–thinking about having a scene where Jackie figures out I’m blind in my left eye, that I’ve been hiding it for everybody, and then another scene where I actually take out my eyepiece and show it to Jackie–the thought of doing that in front of 3 million strangers was horrifying. But it took half a second to realize, yes, of course I have to do this, because the challenge as an actor to do something so personal will be amazing. But also, in the bigger sense, I remembered all those years of not having a diabetic character on television to look up to or relate to, and I realized I’d just been given the chance to be that person. I never dreamed in a million years my acting career would lead to an opportunity like this.