“I thought in the back of my head: There’s no way I’m going to get this.”
Alaqua Cox was in her home office in the Green Bay area of Wisconsin, remembering the moment in early 2020 when some friends sent her an online link to a casting call for a deaf Indigenous woman in her 20s. At the time, Cox, now 26, had been bouncing from job to job (in a nursing home, in Amazon and FedEx warehouses) and had never acted outside of a couple of plays at school. secondary.
She could hardly imagine getting any regular work on television, much less the role of a Marvel superhero: Maya López, better known as Echo, a Marvel comic character. But Cox got it, and soon found herself working her way through the 2021 Disney+ series “Hawkeye” alongside stars Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld.
Now, just over two years after her professional acting debut, Cox is taking the lead in the five-episode spinoff miniseries. “Echo,” which premiered Tuesday night on Disney+ and Hulu. Picking up where “Hawkeye” left off, “Echo” sees Maya transform into a motorcycle-speeding, high-kicking one-woman army, hell-bent on getting revenge on her former mentor, the crime boss known as the Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio). . , for his role in the murder of her father.
growing in the Menominee Tribe On a reservation in Keshena, Wisconsin, Cox, who was born deaf, couldn’t fathom the idea of seeing someone like her on screen. She was used to seeing deaf roles played by hearing characters: “which was nonsense!” she said in a video call last month, with the help of an American Sign Language interpreter, Ashley Change. She rarely saw indigenous roles on screen.
I wasn’t particularly in tune with the superhero genre. Long before sharing scenes with a full-fledged Avenger, Cox primarily consumed Marvel films passively, as a way to bond with his Marvel fan father, William.
“I remember watching with him, sitting on the couch, relaxing on my phone,” she said. “My dad said, ‘No, no, look! ‘Something great is about to happen!’”
It was peer pressure that finally caused Cox to submit his audition video. She recalled lying on a raft on the lake at her parents’ house when another friend of hers contacted her and sent her a screenshot of the casting.
“I knew it was a sign for me to try it,” he said. “I said, ‘Oh, good! Let’s try it.’”
Cox’s self-recorded video was one of hundreds that in June 2020 had landed on the desk of Sarah Finn, who has been the lead casting director for the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the 2008 film “Iron Man.” In search of the perfect fit, she had contacted Native American and deaf schools, organizations and cultural centers across the country. Cox’s tape piqued her interest.
“He has a beautiful, open, smiling face, and then he showed us his reading, which made it almost impossible to believe it was the same person,” Finn said. “He was able to change his mind and channel this other, much more powerful and intense character.”
Once Finn narrowed his selection down to Cox and a few others, he got the studio to assign Cox an acting coach, a personal trainer, and an ASL consultant, all of whom are deaf, to help her prepare for her “screen test.” Hawkeye.” (“It was really nice to be able to have those one-on-one meetings with people,” Cox said, “and it all went very well.”)
The investment paid off; “Hawkeye” had found his echo: someone with, as Finn put it, the “mental, emotional and physical strength to handle the rigors of playing a character like this.”
But there was still a lot to learn, everywhere. Of all the new experiences Cox had available to him, the one he enjoyed most was stunt training, learning five days a week how to deliver a quick kick and a powerful jab. Cox is an amputee who wears a prosthetic leg, but that never stopped him from making a fuss, he said.
“I have a brother who is a year older than me and we were always tough on each other growing up,” he said. “I had to catch him; I was very stubborn! He toughened me up a little bit, so it was easy for me to learn those types of stunts.”
When Finn was casting for “Hawkeye,” there was already talk of a possible spin-off for the character, Finn said. Cox didn’t find out he was in the works for a new series until he was halfway through filming his “Hawkeye” scenes. The news came as a surprise, to say the least. Filming on “Echo” began in April 2022 and Cox stepped in immediately.
“One of the first questions he asked when we first talked was, ‘Can I do my own stunts?’” Sydney Freeland, the series’ showrunner, said of Cox. “I was like, ‘Yeah, go for it!’ “She was willing to go in there, get some lumps and some bruises.”
“His entire filming experience before ‘Echo’ was a few days on ‘Hawkeye,'” added Freeland, who also directed episodes. “For her to go from that small show to being the protagonist of a Marvel series is a tremendous request even for the most experienced actor.”
Whether Cox was riding out on a motorcycle or jumping off a moving freight train (with a safety harness, of course), Change or another performer was positioned in his line of sight, ready to relay the director’s next instructions.
But Cox had another key pre-production request for Freeland and her team: take ASL classes.
“I told him, ‘You’ll be able to communicate with me in basic sign language,’” Cox said. Many of the cast members learned, taking signing classes several times a week, she said (several characters use ASL onscreen to communicate with Maya), as do many key members of the crew, including Freeland. “It was really nice when we got to the set,” Cox added. “They were able to sign ‘How are you?’ and ‘Do you need to go to the bathroom?’ – that kind of simple stuff.”
Freeland was reluctant to take too much credit: “She is very generous in saying that I learned ASL,” he said. “It was probably like talking to a little child for her. But she is more than kind and patient.”
“Echo” was filmed in and around Atlanta, far from Cox’s tight-knit community in Wisconsin. Filming lasted about three months and Cox had no family or friends in the area. It helped to be surrounded by a predominantly Indigenous cast, which included Tantoo Cardinal, Graham Greene, Devery Jacobs and Cody Lightning. “He felt so homey,” he said. “They were like cousins or sisters right away.”
Cox considers it an honor to play Marvel’s first deaf indigenous superhero and provide widespread representation for amputees. But the success has been bittersweet. His father, the biggest Marvel fan. and her daughter died in 2021, the same week her character’s father (Zahn McClarnon), also named William, was shown facing his untimely demise in “Hawkeye.”
“Suddenly, these two worlds collided,” Cox said. “And it was so heartbreaking.”
“But he was very proud of me,” he continued, referring to his father. “I know he’s watching me from heaven and he’s just cheering me on. “I absolutely know and I’m sorry.”
