Alaqua Cox was at home in the Green Bay, Wisconsin area, recalling the moment in early 2020 when friends forwarded her an online link to a casting call for a deaf Indigenous woman in her 20s. At the time, Cox, now 26, was hopping from job to job — in a nursing home, at Amazon and FedEx warehouses — and had never acted beyond a couple of plays in high school.
She couldn't imagine a steady job in television, let alone in the role of a Marvel superhero: Maya Lopez, better known as Echo, a character from Marvel comics. But Cox pulled it off, and soon found himself somersaulting and punching in the 2021 Disney+ series Hawkeye, alongside stars Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld.
Now, just over two years into her professional acting debut, Cox stars in the five-episode miniseries Echo, which premiered Tuesday on Disney+ and Hulu.
Picking up where Hawkeye left off, Echo Maya transforms into a one-man army of motorcycles and roundhouse kicks, hell-bent on getting revenge on her former mentor, the crime boss known as the Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio), for his role in her father's murder.
Raised on the Menominee Tribe's reservation in Keshena, Wisconsin, Cox, who was born deaf, couldn't conceive of the idea of seeing someone like her on screen. She was used to seeing roles of deaf people played by hearing characters — "it was silly!" she said on a video call last month, helped by an American Sign Language interpreter, Ashley Change. Indigenous roles were rarely seen on screen.
Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, better known as Echo.
I wasn't particularly familiar with the superhero genre. Cox primarily consumed Marvel movies "passively," as a means of bonding with his father, William, a Marvel fan.
"I remember watching them with him, sitting on the couch, looking at the phone," she says. "My father would say, 'No, no, look! Something great is about to happen.'"
It was peer pressure that finally caused Cox to submit his audition video. She remembers lying on a raft on the lake at her parents' house when another friend contacted her and sent her a screenshot of the casting call.
"I knew it was a sign for me to give it a try," he says. "I was like, 'OK! Let's give it a try.'"
The video that made her famous
Cox's self-recorded video was one of hundreds that in June 2020 arrived at the desk of Sarah Finn, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's top casting director since the 2008 film Iron Man. In search of the perfect candidate, she had reached out to Native American and deaf schools, organizations, and cultural centers across the country. Cox's short film piqued his 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 in the blink of an eye and channel this other, much more powerful and intense character."
Once Finn narrowed down his selection to Cox and a few others, he got the studio to assign Cox an interpretation teacher, a personal trainer, and an American Sign Language consultant, all of whom are deaf, to help her prepare for her Hawkeye screen test.
The investment paid off. Hawkeye had found his Echo: someone with, as Finn put it, the "mental, emotional, and physical fortitude to go through the rigors of playing a character like this."
But there was still a lot to learn, in every way. Of all the new experiences Cox was presented with, the one he enjoyed the most was stunt training, learning five days a week how to deliver a quick kick and a powerful punch. Cox was an amputee and wears a prosthetic leg, but that never stopped her from playing, she says.
Alaqua Cox got her character a spin-off.
"I have a brother who is a year older than me, and we were always very each other when we were little," he explains. "I had to catch him; He was very hard-headed! He toughed me up a little bit, so it was easy for me to do that kind of stunts."
When Finn auditioned for Hawkeye, there was already talk of a possible spin-off series. Cox didn't find out that a new series was in the works until he was halfway through filming his Hawkeye scenes. The news came as a surprise, to say the least. Filming for Echo began in April 2022 and Cox came on board immediately.
"One of the first questions he asked when we first spoke was, 'Can I do my own stunts?'" This is what Sydney Freeland, author-producer of the series about. "And I said, 'yes, go ahead.' She was willing to get in there, get some punches and bruises."
"His whole shooting experience before Echo was a few days in Hawkeye,'" added Freeland, who also directed episodes. "For her to go from that small sample size to being the lead in a Marvel series is a tremendous challenge. It is for even the most experienced actor."
Cox had another key pre-production request for Freeland and her team: to take sign language classes.
"I said, 'Be able to communicate with me in basic sign language,'" Cox says. Many of the cast members learned, taking sign language classes a few times a week, she said — several characters use on-screen sign language to communicate with Maya — as did many key crew members, including Freeland. "It was really nice when we got to the studio," Cox adds. "They could sign 'How are you?' and 'Do you need to go to the bathroom?' — those kinds of simple things."
Freeland was reluctant to take too much credit for herself: "It's very generous to say that I learned sign language," she said. "It was probably like talking to a little kid for her. But he's very kind and very patient."
The filming of "Echo"
"Echo," which had its international premiere a few days ago, is a five-episode miniseries.
Echo was filmed in and around Atlanta, far from Cox's close-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, including Tantoo Cardinal, Graham Greene, Devery Jacobs, and Cody Lightning. "I felt right at home," he says. "They were like cousins or sisters immediately."
Cox considers it an honor to play Marvel's first deaf indigenous superhero and give representation to amputees. But the success has been bittersweet. Her father — the biggest fan of both Marvel and his daughter — died in 2021, the same week that his character's father (Zahn McClarnon), who is also named William, appeared to meet his premature end in Hawkeye.
"All of a sudden, these two worlds collided," Cox said. "And it was so heartbreaking.
"But he was very proud of me," she continued of her father. "I know he's looking down on me from heaven and cheering me up. I know it and I'm sorry."
Source: The New York Times