Lauren Ridloff’s Eternals character shedding light on ASL and subtitles

Lauren Ridloff is known as Connie in The Walking Dead world, but she is gaining a huge fan base in the MCU. Ridloff stars in the new movie Eternals as Makkari, who possesses the superpower of superspeed. She is the first deaf superhero, and this has brought ASL to the forefront, and fans are eager to learn.

In an interview with Variety, Ridloff shared that she had never seen anyone like herself represented on screen. When she first saw Makkari in the film for the first time she wept tears of joy! In the Eternals comic storyline, Makkari is a white, hearing man, but from the start, the creators wanted to widen the MCU demographic with the characters in this film.

On the set, Ridloff had so much support from the other cast members. If her back is to the director, she had no way of knowing when they would call “action.” Angelina Jolie suggested the use of a laser pointer. This improvisation worked perfectly, and now Ridloff uses this on The Walking Dead set as well.

Lauren Ridloff Eternals ASL

ASL (American Sign Language) is not universal, so a discussion was had about using it in the film or perhaps creating a new sign language for the film. It was decided to use ASL as the characters speak English. By having a deaf character in this film, it has opened up many conversations about ASL and about normalizing subtitles. Ridloff talked about how we are so reliant on text in our world; why not incorporate this into the movies.

It seems like a great idea as there are times, for hearing or non-hearing people when it is difficult to hear what is being said on screen. Why not make this the norm?

Below is an excellent video of Ridloff teaching everyone, including the cast, how to sign the names of the Eternals characters.

It is an exciting time to see many underrepresented groups finally get their time to shine.

In the Variety interview, Ridloff had this to stay about more opportunities for herself and others

"I’m hopeful that this movie will create more opportunities for myself, but also I’m very hopeful that this creates more opportunities for other deaf people [and] for people with other disabilities, not only in front of the camera, but also behind the camera. We need more people in the writers room. We need more people involved with pre-production. We need people who are deaf or have disabilities."

The Walking Dead returns to AMC and AMC+ in February 2022.