Rose Ayling-Ellis no longer wants to play “token deaf characters”
Ayling-Ellis delivered a powerful lecture at the Edinburgh International TV Festival 2022.
Former star of EastEnders star Rose Ayling-Ellis has criticised representation of deaf people on TV, in a powerful lecture delivered at the Edinburgh International TV Festival 2022.
Ayling-Ellis was giving the Alternative MacTaggart Lecture where she said that while on a set she is "almost always working with scripts that are written by hearing people" and that "it can be frustrating, playing a hearing person’s perception of what a deaf person is like".
While she said she is "grateful" for the role which has given her "lots of opportunities", and that "being the first deaf person to play a regular character is a huge privilege and was long overdue", she added that scripts on the soap are often "not quite right".
She said she is often written as being in a room "with a big group of people arguing with each other, following everything that is being said and even repeating things back to them".
"Or they will write my character as lipreading someone from impossibly far away, like I have a superpower, which is not realistic at all!"
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Ayling-Ellis said that she has "asked countless times for a deaf consultant to be brought in to work with the writing teams, to help advise on ways to incorporate and respect deaf culture," yet due to filming demands, "the importance of consultants is often forgotten".
She also said: "Even though I am not paid to do the extra work on top of my job, I try to fix the problem on set and a lot of the time people are very supportive and make changes based on my advice.
"But the problem is, it doesn't get added to the script. So, when it comes to editing, the editor follows the original script and the changes I make are left out of the final cut. This isn’t a one off, it happens to me every week."
Ayling-Ellis said that she has started to see "small changes" working in the industry, and she has been invited into the writers room to make sure scenes are realistic, but adds "it shouldn’t have taken me two years of repeating my frustrations, using up my time and energy, to get to a point where I feel able to demand that my needs are met".
Ayling Ellis announced she was leaving EastEnders earlier this month, saying at the time: "It’s been incredibly special to be EastEnders’ first regular deaf actor. I have loved my time on the show and Frankie has been such an awesome character to play, however now feels like the right time for me to move on and I am excited and ready for new challenges."
A spokesperson from the BBC told RadioTimes.com: “Rose delivered an incredibly powerful and important Alternative MacTaggart. We are committed to taking action and removing the barriers faced by deaf and disabled people across all of our productions.”
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