Rose Ayling-Ellis takes dig at ‘frustrating’ TV shows’ approach to deaf actors: ‘It’s a struggle!’
Rose Ayling-Ellis has revealed the hidden ‘frustrations’ she feels about the TV industry in how deaf and other disabled actors are regarded.
The 30-year-old speaking to GB News and other press as she prepares for the launch of her new ITV crime drama Code of Silence, where she plays a deaf civilian caught up in a high-stakes police investigation.
Code of Silence tells the story of Allison Brooks (Ayling-Ellis), who works in a Canterbury police station canteen struggling to pay her rent. Her world is turned upside down when she is enlisted to help on a major case.
Allison aids detectives in deciphering what a notorious stick-up gang is planning with a skill she uses every day, lip reading – quickly making her an invaluable part of the investigation.
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Her situation becomes perilous when she becomes further immersed in the case and eventually crosses paths with Liam (Kieron Moore), the crew’s newest recruit.
Allison’s deafness is a core theme of the show, with the dramatically different experience of life characterising much of her interactions with the other characters.
However, Ayling-Ellis and show bosses were keen to stress the show does not present Allison as limited or the challenges of deafness as a sob story in the plot.
Conversely, they wanted to depict a deaf person living on their own terms and in situations where a lay person might initially assume they would be restricted.
To that end, the 30-year-old actress welcomed Code of Silence as a way of breaking past a regular “frustration” for those hard of hearing that “people around them make an assumption of what they can or can’t do.”
Putting herself back in character, Ayling-Ellis imagined Allison’s attraction to the case as she “wants more” than what others might ascribe to her, adding: “I want something more to do with life.”
“That’s what a lot of deaf people struggle with,” the actress explained, relating Allison’s quest to disabled people often being pigeonholed in the entertainment industry.
“Sometimes you work for a company to make the company look good. But they’re not really encouraging you to promote (yourself) and that’s a lot of disabled people’s frustration,” she revealed while speaking at a screening for Code of Silence.
Code of Silence is one of the first dramas to feature a deaf protagonist, played by an actor who also lives with the same condition.
However, Ayling-Ellis detailed did not feel she went in flying the flag of the deaf community – as the show was a compelling story first and foremost.
She explained that programme sought to balance the “truth” of the deaf experience and police drama, allowing her time on set to “not feel like a job”.
“Sometimes when I do project where I feel I have to represent the deaf community, it drained me out,” the actress conceded, who was lauded for her exploration of the deaf experience in 2023’s Signs for Change.
Even still, the 30-year-old stressed how important it was that representation of deafness onscreen must be done by deaf actors to fully capture the intimate subtleties of that experience.
“(Deafness) It’s part of my identity, so it’s a part of who I am. So, whatever I bring to the character, it will automatically be there. The way I behave, the way I communicate, the way I look at people, it’s automatically there… If you don’t have that, you have someone now pretending to be there, it will lose all that,” Ayling-Ellis said.