Eternals star Lauren Ridloff on playing Marvel's 1st Deaf superhero

Eternals star Lauren Ridloff joined Q's Tom Power along with her American Sign Language interpreter, Ramon Norrod, to talk about playing Makkari, the first Deaf superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This transcript was edited for clarity and length.

TOM POWER: Lauren, welcome to Q.

LAUREN RIDLOFF: Hello, everyone. How are you doing?

TOM POWER: I'm doing pretty good. It's lovely to see you. Congratulations on the film. I hear that you were driving through Times Square today and you saw the poster for it...

LAUREN RIDLOFF: I have to say it was a big moment for me. I was in a van, chatting with everybody, getting ready to go to Good Morning America ... and it just so happened that I looked up. Right at that exact moment, I happen to see Makkari, my character, taking her flying leap. It was a really powerful moment in the movie already. To see that [leap] at this precise moment in my hometown, wow, I really felt the feelings.

TOM POWER: I bet. Can you tell me a little bit about Makkari? 

LAUREN RIDLOFF: Makkari is one of ten Eternals. She just happens to be deaf. Her superpower is that, I believe, and she's the fastest Eternal. Because of her speed, she uses sonic booms as her fighting weapon. I had no idea how my running style was going to appear on the screen. All of that came in through post-production. [Afterwards] I went up to the special effects coordinator and just thanked him for making me look so badass.

TOM POWER: In the comics, Makkari is a white man who is not deaf. What kind of conversations did you have with Chloé Zhao about developing this character? 

LAUREN RIDLOFF: When I first sat down with Chloé, and also Nate Moore, one of the executive producers for this film and also on Black Panther, I was sitting there just waiting for them to tell me what they wanted me to play. I was just expecting possibly a damsel in distress. I did not think that I would be playing a superhero, or a demigod, or an alien. Makkari is pretty much all three of those. So I feel like the conversation became much more about investing deeper into what Chloé was thinking. She shifted that conversation to me, finding out more about what I do at home, what I love, my beliefs my interests, my passions. And I just started talking about my passion for reading. I used to be Miss Deaf America in another lifetime, and literacy was my platform at that time. And it's still very important to me today. So I talked about that. My love for reading books and my love for running. Everything just aligned with the character of Makkari. We had swapped out the gender, and ... literally everything. Blonde to dark hair. A hearing person to a Deaf person. All of that. That meant that I had so much freedom to create this character. Makkari kind of became my own creation, so to speak.

TOM POWER: Yeah, it sounds like you can see a lot of yourself in there.  

LAUREN RIDLOFF: Exactly. I would love to be able to run as fast as Makkari. I would love to be able to jump like she does. But what I see in her is what I see in the real world. I am surrounded by other people who are like myself. I'm surrounded by Deaf people. My whole family is Deaf. My husband's Deaf, my sons are Deaf. It's very familiar to me and is very real and intimate to me. I'm surrounded by brown people, by people who have multi-identities, and people who are multi-racial, multicultural. All of that is embodied within me and also within Makkari. How much did you have to educate your co-workers about about working with a deaf actor? Well, the first thing was sharing this space with a deaf person. It's not just about the language. Yes, that is the first thing that you see with me, that I communicate using American Sign Language. But that's not the only thing. There are so many more things to learn about my way of being, you know ... the value of eye contact, your facial expressions and how you use the space around you. It's not something that I can always just teach. It's something that people learn just by being around a deaf person. I feel like I was really fortunate to work with people who were very open. They were very receptive and comfortable and sharing that same space, as they should be. I heard something about Angelina Jolie helping you out. What's the story?

LAUREN RIDLOFF: I was having a tough day at work. The director was working on a scene with the whole cast. We all had to face a wall and turn at the same time on cue. The problem is, I'm staring at a wall and I couldn't hear the director cue us. We had to figure out a complex system of counting down and turning. It worked in the end. But after the fact, after this scene was already shot, I shared this story with Angelina, which is hard for me. I didn't want to appear needy. I didn't want to seem that I needed more support than the average person but I also needed to share. I wanted to vent about what my experience was. When I did that, Angelina suggested using a laser pen. I could just see the laser on the wall within my peripheral vision. Then, when it goes away, that means action. In post-production, they can easily scrub out the laser pen. I had no idea you could even do that! That's now been incorporated in my work moving forward. I use laser pens for cues and for pretty much everything now. I do want to point out that there are opportunities when I'm able to support my cast mates. There was a time when we were shooting and it was very windy. It was actually the scene you might have seen in the trailer, with all of the heroes standing together. The director couldn't be close to us because of it was a wide shot. So she had to stand far away on another cliff. She was trying to yell directions to everybody, but nobody could hear her until my interpreter started interpreting what Chloé was saying. My castmates were like, wow, Lauren's interpreter has super hearing. But actually, my interpreter could see another interpreter standing next to Chloé. That information got relayed across to the other interpreter and then to the whole cast. That's Deaf gain right there, one of those good moments to know sign language.

TOM POWER: Throughout your career as an actor, how did you get more comfortable telling your co-workers what you need on set?

LAUREN RIDLOFF: I feel that this kind of comfort only comes with experience. It comes with working with other actors who really care about their craft. By working closely with these veterans of the industry, I watched them and saw them share their vulnerabilities and frustrations of the day. I saw the challenges they faced and what they would ask for to be able to rise up to the occasion. I watched and I learned. And I realised it's not about me being Deaf. The point is, is I'm here to act. So what do I need to be able to act? Simple as that. The worst thing they can do is say no. 

TOM POWER: Earlier you were talking about your work in literary. Growing up, you said you wanted to be a children's book author ... now here you are starring in The Walking Dead and Eternals. How does one go from children's author aspirant to big screen superhero?

LAUREN RIDLOFF: I know it sounds a little random. But if you actually look at the past, from my interests, leading up to this, it seems kind of natural that I came to this place. Growing up, books were my best friends, just because I didn't really have a lot of peers as deaf kids. So I read, and I used to books as a way to access the world that I didn't have access to. And the characters became my friends. Then that love for books led me to really care and love writing. I used that as an outlet for times that I felt things were challenging. In college I studied creative writing and I started teaching because I wanted to write children's books. I felt that by working with children, kindergarten and first graders, it would be the best way to get into their minds and understand their thought process. But writing also requires a certain amount of empathy. I needed to truly be able to connect with characters that are nothing like me in real life. So I performed.

TOM POWER: Eternals is getting a theatrical release before it goes on Disney+, What sort of barriers still exist for deaf viewers who want to watch a film like this in theatres?

LAUREN RIDLOFF: Lack of accessibility, really. I just had dinner with a friend the other night. She said she was so excited about watching the film this Friday. However, she might have to miss the first few minutes of the movie, because the only open-caption film showing was at six o'clock, which is around the same time she gets off from work. That is the reality of being a deaf moviegoer. You have to work around the movie theatres that provide open-captioning to get access to that, we don't have the luxury of just seeing what movies you know, fit into our schedules. We have to work to fit in the movie schedules. Usually they're shown at very odd times ... not popular times. Like 10 o'clock in the morning on a Monday. So it's really challenging. Also with closed captioning, which basically means when movie theatres offer devices or equipment for deaf and hard of hearing people to watch a movie ... nobody really supervises that equipment and makes sure that all of them are still operational if they work. I feel like there are so many movie theatres that just assume that no deaf people are going to show up. But you would be surprised that there are over 460 million deaf and hard of hearing people throughout the world, somebody is going to show up. And usually we tend to show up, the devices are not ready, they're broken. They don't know where they are. So that is the frustrating thing. And that's the reality still today.  

TOM POWER: Our producer Vanessa was telling me a story. Her sister is deaf, and she was saying that when they want to go see movies together, local theatres don't have a lot of those closed-captioning devices on hand. And the ones they do have are often broken. 

LAUREN RIDLOFF: That's exactly true. I mean, this is a bummer. One of the big positives about streaming content is it's so much more accessible. We have access to subtitles at home. We can make the movie work with our schedule. We're in control of that situation. At this moment, I feel like the community at large is ready for subtitles. Look at the popularity of Squid Game. It's all subtitled. Then you have Parasite. It's a very inclusive issue for everybody. Even for people who hear just fine, they can see the subtitles and see how every character spells their name. 

Interview produced by Vanessa Greco.