Echo used deaf creative team to 'inject authenticity' into new Marvel show

Watch: Echo director Sydney Freeland discusses representation in the Marvel show

Echo marks a new milestone in representation within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) thanks to its focus on deaf anti-hero Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), and director Sydney Freeland tells Yahoo UK the importance of "inject[ing] authenticity" into the show by having as many deaf creatives involved as possible.

Maya first appeared in the MCU as a villain, but her solo series sees the character embark on a quest to find herself again following the events of Hawkeye which saw her shoot her adoptive uncle Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) in the face. But it won't be easy because Kingpin is keen to get revenge.

The five-part series sees Maya using American Sign Language with her family in Oklahoma, all of whom communicate to her with varying proficiency. Freeland explains that the creative team behind the show were keen to do justice by the deaf community with the representation in the series, and to do so meant including deaf creatives both in front and behind the camera.

"What we found out with our deaf writers, the deaf consultants, and the people who have scenes [is] we tried to inject the authenticity into the filming, we tried to inject authenticity into the series wherever we could," Freeland explains.

To do this the cast and crew learnt sign language together and Freeland also researched the best ways in which to depict it onscreen whenever Maya is communicating with those around her.

The director says: "I think one of the first things that I did, and our crew really, when [we] first started prep is we all started taking American Sign Language classes.

"So when you and I are talking right now, we're speaking and I'm vocalising, and the words coming out of my mouth are the texts but the way that I'm talking to you is the subtext right? Like if you ask me, 'how are you?' and I said 'I'm fine' that's the text, but if I said 'I'm fine' [in a different tone] the subtext is I'm not.

"One of the things that we all learned is that in sign language signing [is] the text and then the face is the subtext. It's the expression, it's the motion, it's how much emotion you see in your face. But you need [signing] and [facial expressions] to be able to get the full emotional context of what's being communicated."

Freeland adds that she worked closely with the show's creative team to decide when a close-up would work for a scene with Maya and when it wouldn't, saying: "We had deaf writers, we had deaf consultants behind the scenes, we have deaf actors, and the other thing that we start trying to incorporate was ASL proficiency.

"Among [Maya's] family members you see a wide variety of basic fluency, and some of that was intentional, some of that was created creatively. You have somebody like Bonnie [played by Devery Jacobs] on one end of the proficiency spectrum, who is she's just signing and she's not speaking — that's sort of the correct way to communicate with somebody who's deaf.

"But then you have somebody like the Elders, you have Graham Greene and Chula [played by Tantoo Cardinal], they sign a little bit slower and they do what's called SimCom, so they sign and they speak at the same time, it's a little bit slower, it's a little bit stilted. But that was something that we tried to build into our narrative."

The idea of family is an important one to Echo, with both Maya's community in Oklahoma and her relationship with Fisk being explored in the show, the latter of which Freeland describes as "unhealthy" and "built conditionally".

"I think one of the big themes of our show is family and more specifically, what is the definition of family? There's conditional family, there's unconditional family, there's all different varieties of that, of how people relate to each other in the familial context.

"So that was one of the things that we were really excited to explore in the show, you have one end of the spectrum where you have somebody like Kingpin and Maya who have an unhealthy family relationship. It's built conditionally and as unhealthy as this might be there's still a lot of love there between the two of them.

"And then on the other side of the spectrum you have Maya's biological family back in Oklahoma, and what I love about this series is that Maya comes into it with one definition of family, and over the course of the show we're going to challenge that definition and see if she's able to see things in a different way."

Echo premieres on Disney+ on Wednesday, 10 January.

Watch the trailer for Echo: