Rose Ayling-Ellis' new drama makes deafness a power not a disability

Yahoo

14-05-2025

Rose Ayling-Ellis has said it was important to her that her new drama made her deafness a power not a disability.
The former EastEnders actor and Strictly Come Dancing champion stars alongside Charlotte Ritchie and Andrew Buchan in ITV crime drama Code of Silence, about a deaf woman who uses her lip reading skills to help the police solve crimes.
Ayling-Ellis said it was a very important role for as she did not want to play a disabled character "preaching about debility". She also revealed she is enjoying her career as an actor and the fame that comes with is a lot more since she realised it is not her duty to represent the entire deaf community,
Ayling-Ellis appeared on The One Show on Tuesday, 13 May, alongside Ritchie to discuss their new crime drama.
The former soap star and Strictly winner told hosts Alex Jones and Roman Kemp: "I don't want to just have a character who is disabled preaching about debility. No. I just wanted to create a drama that has a storyline that happens to be deaf and using her deafness as an advantage, to gain, and I think it's important that we see more of that."
She also revealed the inventive technique she used to show the rest of the cast and crew on set what she hears. And viewers of the show will hear from her characters perspective.
Ayling-Ellis explained: "Yeah, so, a lot of people were asking me, 'What do you hear?' And obviously I can't explain because I don't know what you guys can hear. But everyone assumes that I just hear silent, but it's not. So I thought, oh, it'd be better for me to bring in a stethoscope and you plug it into my hearing aid and then you can hear what my hearing aid hears. So we did a little recording and so we put a microphone against it and recorded the whole scene, and then we gave it to the sound department and then they made the sound. So it's more of a mechanical chaotic noise."
Ritchie added: "I don't know what I expected, but it's very mechanical and it's kind of lots of highs and lows, and it's quite disorientating. So it's really, it was amazing to get an insight into kind of how you might be feeling. Especially in like a busy crew with lots going on, not to mention being the lead role, having lots of lines and spear heading the drama. It's a lot, but you did it. You nailed it."
Ayling-Ellis said she had previously struggled with the pressure of her fame making her a deaf role model.
She said: "I think in the last few years, I obviously felt that pressure, but what I told myself - that pressure shouldn't be on me. I'm not here to represent the whole of that community. That pressure should be on the industry, onto society. They're the ones that should make the choices, not put it on me. And then once I've thought that, I'm enjoying acting and just doing my job."
Read more: Rose Ayling-Ellis
'Elephant' or 'I Love You'? Charlotte Ritchie, Rose Ayling-Ellis on Lip-Reading Drama 'Code of Silence' (Hollywood Reporter, 4 min read)
Rose Ayling-Ellis struggled to keep her Doctor Who role a secret (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read)
Rose Ayling-Ellis brings viewers to tears in emotional BBC sign language documentary (Yahoo UK, 3 min read)
Jo Joyner and Diane Kruger were also on the show to discuss their new drama Little Disasters. The Paramount+ show is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Sarah Vaughan about two women who meet at antenatal class and make friends. They then meet again years later when one is an A&E doctor and the other brings in her baby with an unexplained head injury.
Diane said of working on British TV compared to Hollywood: "It's a lot. It's exhausting. You do so many pages a day and you push, you put out so many fires every single day, It's exhilarating, because you have to be ready, on take one, you don't have the luxury of time as you have on a film. And there was a lot of tea."
The One Show airs on BBC One at 7pm on weekdays.
Code of Silence begins on ITV1 and ITVX at 9pm on Sunday, 18 May.
Little Disasters will stream on Paramount+ from Thursday, 22 May.