We first met Zach Anner on an "Oprah Winfrey Show" episode back in 2010 when he charmed us by saying that his cerebral palsy is "the sexiest of the palsies." Now, he has landed his own show on Oprah Winfrey's Network, and it's set to debut this month.
Anner was one of two winners of "Your OWN Show: Oprah's Search for the Next TV Star," a competition show on Oprah's network that netted the winner their own reality show. (The other winner was Kristina Kuzmic-Crocco, whose cooking intervention show is also set to debut on the network.)
But besides his wicked sense of humor, what else is there to know about OWN's newest star? Here are 10 things to know about Zach Anner and his new show, "Rollin' With Zach."
1. According to his website, Zach was born on Nov. 17, 1984 in Buffalo.
2. Zach attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied television and film.
3. Zach and his troupe, Lark the Beard, created sketch comedy shows and mockumentaries such as "That's Awesome" and "The Wingmen."
3. His travel show has been a longtime goal. Anner told Disability Scoop, "I think that the best way to get a broader perspective on your life is to travel and to just take life as it comes." He also described traveling to Europe with his dad. "We had to take apart my electric wheelchair so that we could shove it on a train in seconds, and I've carried luggage as my dad pushed me up a mountain," he said.
4. Anner is a huge John Mayer fan, and vice versa. So who else to tap to record the "Rollin' With Zach" theme song? You can listen to Mayer's theme song, "Let the Boy," here.
5. "Rollin' With Zach" will take Anner across the United States. He'll surf the SoCal waves in L.A., water ski on Lake Michigan, take a birds-eye tour of the Big Apple, sail under the Golden Gate Bridge, rock climb in Mount Hood National Forest, and try his luck in Vegas.
6. His list of "Top 10 People I'd Like To Meet" includes everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Don Johnson. He also lists Barack Obama -- when he was in college!
7. The "Your OWN Show" votes were not without controversy. When online votes for another contestant on the show suddenly surged, cheating was suspected. But a set of spam blogs were found to be the cause of skewed votes in the competition.
8. Wheelchair-bound Zach has long aspired to crawl the Austin Marathon.
9. According to an article in The New York Times, Anner requested to interview Bill Clinton at a book signing for his book, "My Life," but was declined by the former president's publicist. Still, Anner got a word in edgewise. While waiting in line, he shouted his question out anyway: "Being an environmentalist, how do you intend to save the trees with a book that's this long?" Mr. Clinton conceded that perhaps the 1,008-page book should have been printed on recycled plastic.
10. His impromptu interview with Oprah may have sealed the deal for his "OWN Show" win. Oprah called his questions "beautiful." Of his opinion of Oprah, Zach said, "I think she has a career in television."
"Rollin' With Zach" debuts on Dec. 12 on OWN.
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