Deaf Actor Gets His Chance To Be Wicked

Actor Russell Harvard is playing a hit man on the TV show Fargo. The FX series is based on the the 1996 Coen brothers film of the same name. NPR quotes Harvard as saying, "The character is not really specific about being deaf, or having any related deaf issues. It's just Fargo, period." According to NPR, show creator Noah Hawley says he..

got the idea for a deaf hit man from spending time in Austin, where he lives part time in a neighborhood near the Texas School for the Deaf. "As I was formulating the show, I kept seeing sign language around everywhere," he says. "It's such a compelling and visual means of communication, but it's also a language that most people don't speak. So it creates an amazing amount of privacy, for deaf people to be surrounded by hearing people and be able to communicate in a way that no one can really understand."

Read the whole interview here.