‘Coda’ breakout Troy Kotsur: ‘I hope people see me as an actor who happens to be deaf’

Sian Heder’s 2021 Sundance hit Coda gives audiences revealing and touching insights into the everyday pressures faced by someone defined by the film’s title — a child of deaf adults — and obliged to serve as a hearing conduit between her family and the wider world. Thanks to the colourful terminology its 17-year-old protagonist Ruby (Emilia Jones) and her deaf older brother Leo (Daniel Durant) deploy to playfully tease and taunt each other (“ass monkey”, “twat waffle” and so on), they also get a crash course in the art of the signed insult.

For Troy Kotsur, the actor who plays Ruby and Leo’s fisherman father Frank, this latter element is an overdue corrective to something that has rankled him for much of his 53 years.

“When I was growing up, I saw the hearing world’s vulgarities with all of its dirty language printed in film sub­titles,” he explains through an interpreter. “So when I read the script for Coda, I was extremely excited to finally see vulgar sign language. Now it’s the other way round — we’re showing what our language, our culture and our vulgarities look like. My only question was, ‘Are hearing people ready to see that on screen?’”

Apple clearly thought they were, seeing in Heder’s film a title that would appeal not only to its subscribers (the film made its Apple TV+ debut last August) but also awards bodies, splashing out a record $25m for Coda at last year’s virtual Sundance Film Festival. And the quartet of prizes it picked up at Sundance — among them the grand jury prize, the audience award and a special jury award for its ensemble cast — proved just the beginning of its red-carpet journey.

Jones, the young British star of Net­flix fantasy series Locke & Key, has been lauded for a performance that saw her named breakthrough performer at November’s Gotham Awards. But it is relative unknown Kotsur who will likely emerge as Coda’s most garlanded cast member, and his supporting performance win at the Gothams (beating fellow nominee Marlee Matlin, his on-screen wife in Coda) has since been followed by best supporting actor citations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Independent Spirits, the Bafta Film Awards and the Oscars.

With his gangly frame, bushy beard and healthy libido, Kotsur’s Frank Rossi is a highlight of Heder’s drama. Yet the performance did not appear out of the ether — the Arizona-born actor and Gallaudet University theatre and TV/film graduate had 30 years of stage experience to draw on by the time Coda began shooting in autumn 2019.

Much of this came through his involvement with Deaf West Theatre, a Los Angeles-based company that features both spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL) in its productions — Kotsur’s roles there include Cyrano de Bergerac, Lenny in Of Mice And Men and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. There have been sporadic appearances also on film and TV, including as a Tusken Raider in Disney+ series The Mandalorian — a treasured experience for this childhood Star Wars fan. A 2006 episode of CSI: NY saw him and Matlin guest-star as a murdered teenager’s parents.

Defining moment

Matlin’s Oscar-winning performance in 1986’s Children Of A Lesser God was a landmark in deaf representation that left its mark on the then 17-year-old Kotsur. “It was inspiring to see the authentic portrayal of a deaf actor on screen and I’ve always followed her career since,” professes the actor, who was born deaf to hearing parents in 1968.

Only recently, however, have deaf characters and stories enjoyed comparable exposure, the likes of 2019’s Sound Of Metal (about a drummer who loses his hearing), last year’s Eternals (in which deaf actress Lauren Ridloff played a deaf superhero) and two A Quiet Place films (breakout vehicles for deaf teenager Millicent Simmonds) spotlighting what, in cinematic terms, has traditionally been a marginalised and underserved community.

“It’s up to people to open their minds, and producers to think outside the box,” opines Kotsur, who directed his own deaf superhero picture, No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie, in 2013. “Most of the time they’re not sure how to develop a deaf role because they haven’t had the experience of doing it yet. Maybe they’re sensitive about money, so they prefer to have an A-list actor playing deaf.”

La Famille Belier, the 2014 French feature on which Coda is based, drew criticism for its casting of non-deaf actors. “But, as Marlee always says, deafness is not a costume, and I’m so glad Sian stayed true to her vision of having deaf roles played by deaf actors,” signs Kotsur.

As father to a hearing daughter himself, Kotsur found it easy to forge a bond with Jones that was strong enough to survive the bone-chilling mornings they spent preparing for their roles as Massachusetts trawler operators. “She has a lot of signs that are similar to my daughter’s, they’re around the same age and she was learning to sing just as my daughter did growing up, so there were a lot of parallels and similarities.”

He also made a lasting connection with his other on-screen child, having worked with Durant on Deaf West’s Cyrano. “Daniel reminds me of myself about 20 years ago; he’s motivated, passionate and hungry,” Kotsur signs. “We have similar interests and shared an Airbnb during shooting, so we really connected as father and son over filming.”

Currently preparing to play the coach of an all-deaf school track-and-field team in fact-based drama Flash Before The Bang, alongside his actress spouse Deanne Bray, Kotsur feels “touched, thrilled and blessed” by the attention Coda has brought him. (He will not miss the aroma of fish though, admitting it took “10 bars of soap and an extreme deep clean” to get rid of the stench.)

“I’m honoured to be nominated with so many fine actors and I’m looking forward to celebrating with them,” he concludes. “I hope people are able to see me not as a deaf actor, but an actor who happens to be deaf.”

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