Marlee Matlin said it was “imperative” that the person directing her documentary, “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” was also deaf. So when producers of American Masters suggested her longtime friend Shoshannah Stern, who created Sundance Now’s “This Close” — the first TV series created, written by, and starring deaf artists — Matlin knew she was in good hands.
“Having her on board, I knew that I could trust her 100%,” Matlin told TheWrap via an ASL interpreter at TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt. “She followed her instincts all those years of us knowing each other, I knew she was the perfect fit.”
The 59-year-old actress, who was the first deaf performer to win an Oscar in 1987 for her role in “Children of a Lesser God,” said, “It was imperative that I had a director who was deaf, and I knew that someone deaf like myself had the same lived experiences with ‘deafness,’ to make a film authentically, to bring it to life on the screen, to know how to frame the story.”
Stern told TheWrap that “Marlee’s story was so clear” to her because she identified so strongly with Matlin. “I saw myself on screen for the first time when she won her award,” Stern, who also played the lead role in “Children of a Lesser God” at the Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles, said.
Matlin had previously written a biography in 2009 called “I’ll Scream Later,” but explained, “I knew there was much more to my story than what was written in the book, and I also knew that it had to be told visually.”
She credits Stern for selecting what details of her life to focus on. “You learn more about me in the documentary than people knew, and it was Shoshannah who put it all together,” she said. “I had no part in what Shoshannah chose to edit, no part in the making of it. She did it all. I’m one of those people out there now watching just like you, to learn about myself, truly. And I lived it!”
Stern added, “As someone who has had to map out and navigate a map or a land that hasn’t been charted before, you have to have good intuition, instinct. You have to have a good true north, a good compass. Marlee’s ahead of her time in so many different ways. And I think the documentary really shows that, and the fact that Marlee believed in me, that I could do it, that I had the strength and the confidence.”
Matlin explained that she never thought of being deaf, or representing the Deaf community, as a “burden.”
“I’ve always wanted to say, ‘Come on board. Share with me. it. Let’s collaborate. Let’s all work together,’” she explained. “I hope this film will tell people that it’s OK, that we are allowed to work together.”
Watch Matlin and Stern’s full interview with TheWrap in the video above.
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