Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 10, 1992 TAG: 9201100374
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Jeff Silverman/ New York Times
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
LOUD AND CLEAR
It was the kind of meeting: a producer looking for the right actor, and an actor looking for the right work. Usually, those meetings begin with hope and dissolve, eventually, in frustration. This one worked the other way.When Marlee Matlin, the yougest Academy Award winner in the Best Actress category for her stunning performance, at 21, in the 1986 film "Children of a Lesser God," met with Roabert Singer, the executive producer and creator of "Reasonable Doubts," she was about to give up on the idea of series television.
She had explored the possibilities; little looked promising, even less appealed to her gut.
Meanwhile, Singer, coming off the critically successful NBC series "Midnight Caller," had found little but frustration in his search for a woman to star as the opinionated, liberal Chicago prosecutor opposite Mark Harmon's maverick cop-turned-investigator in his latest creation.
The potential immediately intrigued them both.
"She has a star quality that's unmistakable," says Singer, now half a season into production of the NBC dramatic series, which is broadcast at 10 p.m. Fridays on WSLS Channel 10. "She's direct. She's very self-assured. Though the show wasn't conceived with Marlee in mind, from my first writing," he stresses, "it was always for her."
With one significant and complex ingredient that he hadn't originally planned:
"Obviously," says Matlin, speaking in sign language through an interpreter and flashing her electric grin, "they had to make the character deaf in order for me to play the role."
That turned out to be a challenge that could be dealt with fairly simply, with a few external flourishes. Like giving Harmon's character a deaf parent so he would know sign language for communicating with Matlin's character, Tess Kaufman.
Providing her with an interpreter in courtroom sequences. Learning the words Matlin could speak understandably and those she had difficulty with so the producers could balance her signing with her speech for best dramatic effect and pacing.
The real challenge, though, both for the actress and producer, has been the week-by-week development of Tess into a character who happens to be deaf instead of simply a deaf character. Their goal is to integrate deafness into the part rather than focusing on it as the main element of the role.
To do that, both the actress and the producer have had to listen - really listen - to each other. They have had to come to understand, and, given the pressures of series television, understand quickly, the particular needs of each other's worlds.
"At first, I could see that the writers were caught off guard," says Matlin. "It takes time for people to assimilate ideas about deafness. But I'm not only teaching them about deaf things. They're teaching me about the real things when it comes to writing - things that I don't hear, things that I don't necessarily see."
Though "Reasonable Doubts" has been moved around a bit in the NBC schedule, it has found a niche on Fridays, consistently beating CBS's regular programming but finishing a distant second to ABC's "20/20."
Singer adds, "we seem to have a loyal following," and the show has been picked up for a full 22 episodes this year. And this month, Matlin was nominated for a Golden Globe award as best actress in a dramatic series.
On a recent morning, Matlin, in bleached jeans and green pullover, is under a little less time pressure than usual; she's not needed on the set until almost noon.
She leans back in the swivel chair behind the desk of her second-floor office suite - it was her apartment before she moved into the house she now shares in the Hollywood Hills with the former "L.A. Law" producer David Kelley.
On her walls are the artifacts of Hollywood success: photographs with Michael Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Joel; a framed magazine cover. When she props her feet atop the desk it is evident they are constantly in motion, continually fidgeting, as if they were the repository of nervous energy the way other people's hands are.
At 26, Matlin has won Hollywood's biggest prize, and suffered its cold shoulder. She has received the praise, and the carping, and seems to have weathered both.
"There was one critic who said I didn't deserve an Academy Award," she remembers, "because I was a deaf person playing a deaf person. I was new in the business and was extremely hurt. Who the hell does he think he is? Another critic said I would never work again. And he's not the only one who said that."
Through her interpreter, Jack Jason, vice president of Matlin's production company, she carries on her conversation, sometimes signing, sometimes speaking, sometimes pantomiming, peppering it all with the unprintable, but always meeting her visitor eye to eye.
"I look at faces and expressions very deeply," she says, "because that's the way I have to communicate."
Which, she admits, can present its own disconcerting challenges. Just the week before, she had met rock singer David Crosby at the premiere of the Steven Spielberg movie "Hook."
"He was talking on and on about how he loved my show," she recalls, "and I was talking on and on about how he had to trim his mustache for me to read his lips. And" - she demonstrates, laughing - "he pulled up his mustache like this, and said, `Is that better?' And I said, `Oh, that's much better.' "
Then, seriously: "If I meet someone who knows that I'm deaf and doesn't make any effort for me to understand them, from my point of view, it's very selfish. People who know that I'm deaf should be able to acknowledge the fact that I have a deafness."
She broke the communication barrier with the "Reasonable Doubts" cast and crew by handing out copies of a manual for signing counselors when she met them. Now most of the crew members can sign at least their names and the important signs - "like rolling, quiet, take, wrap and lunch," says Matlin - necessary for their work.
But because she is an actor who is deaf, she carries the weight of a second agenda projected onto her by others - role model. While "Reasonable Doubts" is generally applauded by the deaf community, there are factions who want her to speak more and factions who want her solely to sign.
"I even got a letter from a guy quite respected in the deaf community - he was worried about the image I present of deaf people - who told me I should stop swearing and I should stop using sexual connotations on my show because, hey, deaf people don't swear, deaf people don't have sex, deaf people don't get involved with violence. Well, there are plenty of deaf people who do, and why can't I represent that? You have to get real sometimes.
"I think of myself as a human being who happens to be deaf," but, she emphasizes, "I don't live to be deaf."
`Reasonable Doubts' usually airs Fridays, 10 p.m. WSLS Channel 10. Pre-empted tonight for 2-hour Soap Opera Awards, 9 p.m.
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