Deaf representation in Sky’s new dark drama ‘I Hate Suzie’

Today, the world of celebrity actor Suzie Pickles comes crashing down in an intense, edgy series starring Doctor Who’s Billie Piper. Alongside husband Cob (Daniel Ings), deaf son Frank is amongst those watching from the sidelines.

Reporter Liam O’Dell has been looking into the inclusion of deaf people on and off-screen, ahead of I Hate Suzie’s release.

“I have a friend who is deaf and she’s just always very, very funny about what is funny about being deaf, and the things she gets away with as a result of that,” says writer Lucy Prebble, speaking to a virtual audience in an online Q&A about her decision to include the deaf character Frank in her latest dramatic story.

“I was like, ‘well that, you never really see’,” she continues. “Could you get like a naughty boy and this, that and the other? It was just a way of being inspired by putting something on screen.”

‘Naughty boy’ Frank, played by Matthew Jordan-Caws, is just another challenge for mother Suzie (Piper). Her life is turned upside down when she finds out that compromising images of her have been posted online, and her relationship with short-tempered husband Cob (Ings) becomes even more hostile.

Expanding on Lucy’s answer, Daniel adds that the playwright – known for adaptations such as the play A Very Expensive Poison and TV series Secret Diary of A Call Girl – wanted Cob to be more proficient in British Sign Language (BSL).

It’s something which he says became a stick for his character to beat Suzie with.

9pm tonight Sky Atlantic and NOWTV pic.twitter.com/R2ZDSF5jeE

— Lucy Prebble (@lucyprebblish) August 27, 2020

“He could communicate with her son in a way that she couldn’t,” The Crown star explains, “so he committed to that in this incredibly way, for all of his flaws.”

Helping him pick up sign language was deaf performer Brian Duffy – one of three BSL consultants working on the drama.

“Together we talked about what would Cob know, how much has he been exposed to our community?” Duffy tells me in an email. “Is he proud? How willing is he to make his son happy?

“Then there’s the signing. I hit him with the hard truth: it is impossible to be fluent in a such short time,” he adds. “Fortunately for Daniel, that level of fluency is not required, not yet anyway.

“However, he needed to show that Cob has done better in this area – considerably better than Suzie.”

Duffy also reveals that it’s not often that he is brought on to teach hearing people to sign. The consultant and Daniel spent several weeks working together, with Duffy describing the actor as a special person.

“It’s not often I get to meet people like him,” he says. “So receptive and understanding, he wasn’t afraid to ask any questions in relation to our culture, our language and identity.

“Also, you must remember, Daniel doesn’t come from my world, nor did he grow up in it, and to witness his learning from day one was awesome.

“He understood that the closer you are to the child, the better you can be at signing, so the pressure was on him to portray Cob being closer to Frank, in terms of language.”

It was something Daniel definitely felt. “There’s a responsibility there, I think, to get it right,” he explains. “What I didn’t want to do was to be, like, supposedly doing brilliant sign language in the show, and for people to watch it afterwards and be like, ‘that guy’s talking gibberish’.” 

Producer Andrea Dewsbury says they also talked to the BSL consultant early on about avoiding cliches in storytelling. Their conversation was one of several ways the creative team worked to ensure authentic representation on camera.

“Pauline and Neal, Matthew’s parents, talked to Lucy about little things you might not think of,” Andrea adds. “For example, Pauline said that deaf children put their hands over their eyes when they’re getting told off, so we wanted to make sure stuff like that was part of it.”

In an email, mum Pauline tells me that the idea itself definitely came from her own experiences, as a parent to four deaf children in total.

“My kids close their eyes when they are fed up with me nagging at them or put their head down on the table,” she says. “I also suggested that Frank, the character, wears hearing aids or [a cochlear implant], as deaf kids from hearing families are more likely to wear [them].

“They hadn’t thought about that aspect.”

With the show containing adult content and Matthew unable to see himself on TV, Pauline and husband Neal had to think long and hard about their son’s participation in the programme. 

“In the end we thought this experience would be valuable to him,” Pauline continues in a follow-up message, “especially as he is in a deaf bubble [with a] deaf family and deaf school.”

She goes on to add that as a result of his involvement in the drama, Matthew now has the confidence to work with hearing people and interpreters.

“The production team really looked after him well and was like his second family when he was on set,” she concludes. “It helped him to see that not all hearing people are scary!”

I Hate Suzie is Matthew’s acting debut, and all episodes of the programme will be available to watch with BSL translation on Sky VOD and NOW TV from Thursday.

Photo: © Sky UK Limited.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.