When Marlee Matlin won the Oscar for best actress in 1987 for her performance in Children of a Lesser God, it was a landmark moment for deaf people. But it would be another 35 years before Troy Kotsur became only the second deaf person to be nominated for the honour, for his groundbreaking turn in Coda.
And on Sunday he hopes to become the first deaf actor to win a Bafta in one of the main categories.
“You had not seen a deaf [Oscar] nominee before Marlee so when she won I was thrilled – I thought we had a breakthrough as deaf actors,” said Kotsur, 53. “And so, 35 years later, I’m realising that deaf actors still really struggle to break in.”
Coda (an acronym for child of deaf adults) is about a deaf fishing family in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and their hearing teenage daughter’s passion for singing. Featuring deaf actors in key roles – including Matlin, who plays the wife of Kotsur’s character – and with much of the dialogue in American Sign Language (ASL), the film is being viewed as a groundbreaking moment for Hollywood and for onscreen representation.
The film – which has already won the top prize at Sundance last year, two Screen Actors Guild awards and is nominated for three Baftas and three Oscars - was adapted by writer-director Sian Heder from the French film La Famille Bélier.
But, unlike that 2014 movie, which was criticised for using hearing actors to play deaf people, Coda casts deaf actors in deaf roles. It was reportedly bought by Apple at Sundance for a record $25m.
For Kotsur, after more than 20 years in the industry performing in films, on television and on Broadway, this moment has been a long time in the making. At times he worked multiple jobs and sometimes slept in his car or in theatres. “My question was: how soon will Hollywood accept me and how can I keep my hope alive?” he said. Part of what kept him going was the success of Matlin, who he describes as his hero.
“I call it a really, really hellish long tough journey, and it was, but now here I am,” said Kotsur, from Arizona. Now he hopes that together he and Matlin can “help Hollywood to have some empathy” by changing the way deaf people are seen and portrayed on screen.
The film has had an incredible impact on deaf, hard-of-hearing and disabled people, he said: “Now they’re able to really see their identity, their experience being shown on screen.”
Part of what attracted to him to the film was that it featured multiple deaf characters as opposed to one, which is often the case, and his character’s colourful use of language. “Frank Rossi was able to drop plenty of f-bombs in ASL. So it was a thrill for me to show that part of deaf culture on the big screen,” he said. “We’re so used to seeing all of your hearing movies with your swearing and subtitles, but where was our chance to show that part our language and culture?”
There has, he said, been a cultural shift and in Hollywood, producers and celebrities are now getting in touch with him “rather than me approaching them begging for work”. Actor Javier Bardem told him that he “cried like a baby” watching the film, he said, and stars have spoken to him in sign language.
“I see Hollywood beginning to be motivated to look for something new, something inspiring and avoid the same old tropes that’s not just ‘Oh, have pity for a deaf character’, but have them as the hero,” he said. In the future he would like to develop a story about deaf historical figures.
He is currently reading several scripts and he is talking to producers about adapting hearing characters into deaf roles. “So we’ve been setting up meetings on how can this character communicate. How would a deaf character work in these particular situations? And they’re really showing me that a lot of these producers are beginning to open their minds.”
As well as Kotsur’s nomination for best supporting actor, Coda is also nominated in two other Bafta categories: adapted screenplay for Heder and leading actress for Emilia Jones, who plays Kotsur’s daughter and will sing at Sunday’s ceremony in London at the Royal Albert Hall.
Kotsur said during filming that the British actress reminded him of his own daughter, who is a coda and a similar age. “She’s been through a lot and sometimes it’s hard for her to connect with her hearing friends who don’t really understand what it is like to be raised by deaf parents,” he said. “But our film explains so much and my daughter feels seen and validated.”
Heder, 44, whose first feature film, Tallulah, starred Elliot Page and Allison Janney, and has written and produced for the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, said Coda very nearly did not get made. She originally pitched the adaptation to Lionsgate and was hired to do it by the studio.
But through her research, she made firm decisions about how she wanted to tell the story. As well as hiring deaf actors, she wanted to have half the dialogue in ASL and use silence, and not fill scenes with music. But it was not a match at the studio and the project died. “It was heartbreaking on one hand and on the other hand it felt like that other version of the movie should not exist,” she said.
But when Lionsgate boss Patrick Wachsberger left the studio, he took the film with him and bought it back made it independently with Heder – it was shot in 30 days – and with no distributor.
“There has been so much fear among hearing people in Hollywood in terms of the process,” said Heder, who is from Massachusetts and lives in Los Angeles. Early on, when she was told she wanted to hire deaf actors, people kept asking her how it would work – a question that is not asked about many seemingly impossible feats in the film-making process.
“If you say ‘I want to run this car off the bridge into the river and then I want this building to blow up in the background’, no one says: ‘Well you can’t do that – how would it work?’”
Once everything was in place, the film-making process was “relatively easy”, she said: “So that is an argument that doesn’t hold water any more.”
Deaf charities said the film and the recognition Kotsur has received highlight the importance of deaf people being portrayed on screen and that Kotsur could inspire a generation.
Likethe deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis’s Strictly Come Dancing win, Coda can help transform public understanding of deaf people’s experiences, said Annie Harris, advocacy officer for the Royal National Institute for Deaf People.
“Coda is a wonderful film and Troy has so evidently been nominated for a Bafta on the merits of his performance,” said Harris. “His nomination demonstrates to deaf people like me that some barriers are breaking down, and deaf people are getting the recognition they deserve in their chosen field.” Martin McLean, senior policy adviser at the National Deaf Children’s Society said that for many young deaf people Coda could be the first time they have seen “their reality given the true Hollywood experience”.
He added: “We’re finally starting to see more and more deaf characters and it’s important that we build on this momentum.”
