Latest news with #Ayling-Ellis
Irish Examiner
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Rose Ayling-Ellis: ‘I can't represent all Deaf people because all Deaf people are different'
Every day on the set of new ITV crime drama Code Of Silence, the cast and crew learned a word in British Sign Language (BSL), but Deaf actress Rose Ayling-Ellis had some rules. 'I really tried to avoid teaching rude words, because often that's the only one people remember, and they don't remember anything else,' says the former EastEnders star, 30. 'So, [I told them] 'You can only learn your rude words when you learn more useful ones.'' Ayling-Ellis, who played Frankie in the BBC soap from 2020-2022, plays Alison Brooks in Code Of Silence, a Deaf woman who is working in a police canteen when her talent for lip-reading is spotted. Stockport-born Andrew Buchan, 46, stars as DI James Marsh, while Ghosts and You actress Charlotte Ritchie, 35, plays DS Ashleigh Francis, and, together, they recruit Alison to help them surveil a gang, but what starts out as a covert job becomes fraught. Buchan says learning a word every day was 'magnificent' and lip-reading fascinating. But he says that what Alison is asked to do in the show is 'unfathomable and farcical' when compared with the work of trained forensic lip-readers, who are 'highly sought after by law enforcement. They spend hours analysing video after video of CCTV footage, trying to catch killers, rapists,' he says. Alison, meanwhile, is 'in no way experienced to do this' and his character, Marsh, is a 'very blunt, monomaniacal, driven, impatient' boss, who is recklessly 'enlisting the help of this complete wildcard, who could derail the whole thing'. Buchan says working on the show was 'definitely one of the most enlightening, fantastic jobs I've ever done, without question'. Code of Silence was created by Catherine Moulton (Baptiste, Hijack), who has experience of lip-reading and hearing loss. For star Charlotte Ritchie, the clear communication on set made filming a joy. 'TV sets can be a bit fast paced, can get a bit impersonal, and you can rush past people in the morning and maybe not take the time to communicate and check in,' Ritchie says. 'With this production, there was such an emphasis on really looking at people, really making sure that people were understood, and I think the more that that's possible, the nicer the set feels, and the more people are able to take a breath to work in a way that feels expansive. It just puts communication right at the forefront.' Ritchie attributes this openness to Ayling-Ellis. 'Rose did a really amazing job — because she didn't have to — but she made so much space for everybody to do that.' Ayling-Ellis and the rest of the cast are hopeful that Code Of Silence will usher in a new era of inclusion on telly, while also being a gripping six-parter packed with drama. The entire cast sound in awe of Kent-born Ayling-Ellis, who won Strictly Come Dancing in 2021 with professional dancer Giovanni Pernice. 'I really wanted to do this job, because Rose is really brilliant,' says Ritchie. 'I am just singing her praises now. I need to say something bad about her. She's also a diva! No. Ha ha.' 'I felt like I'd never been truly listened to until I met Rose,' adds Manchester-born Kieron Moore, 28, who plays Alison's love interest, gang member Liam Barlow. 'She pays so much attention to you when you talk. I was constantly learning how to be a better person and a better actor [because of her]. I had that in common with Liam: He's fascinated, he sees [lip-reading] as a skill, he sees this person as a bright bit of light.' Ayling-Ellis says: 'A lot of people assume that communication is just listening and speaking, but there's so much depth to communication.' She entranced the British public when she performed a dance set in silence on Strictly, a moment that represented the Deaf community in a truly momentous and moving way. The actress has become a beacon for a community that has long been ignored by television and film, but that brings with it a lot of pressure. Ayling-Ellis says: 'I've learnt how to balance that pressure and I tell myself I can't represent everyone, it's impossible. I can't represent all Deaf people, because all Deaf people are different and it's not on me to show that on TV.' Ayling-Ellis was born Deaf and was awarded an MBE for services to the Deaf community. 'It's the industry that needs to cast more diversity of Deaf people and that's not on me, so I've cut that pressure off me. I can only do what I can and do my best, and just do what I love and enjoy it and be passionate about it.' 'The pressure is always going to be there,' she adds, 'but I hope we see more Deaf people on screen.' Buchan, who recently appeared in the festive smash hit Black Doves, alongside Keira Knightley, found working with Ayling-Ellis broadened him as a person. 'Rose isn't just reading your lips, she's reading who and what you are, so you have to make an effort — in life and in the scenes — to be entirely legible and that's a very new and brilliant experience,' he says. 'It makes everything very alive and present and in the moment.' Former boxer and Emmerdale and Vampire Academy actor Moore agrees. 'Doing this job has impacted me way more as a person than it has as an actor,' he says. 'There's this level of honesty that comes with Rose that, I promise you, you've not seen, except from younger members of your family.' Ayling-Ellis and the rest of the cast are hopeful that Code Of Silence will usher in a new era of inclusion on television, while also being a gripping six-parter packed with drama. 'That combination of representation and pure talent was a no-brainer for me,' says Ritchie. 'You see the show and it feels so overdue.' Code Of Silence will premiere on ITV1, STV, ITVX, and STV Player on Sunday, May 18.
Leader Live
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Leader Live
Rose Ayling-Ellis thanks Claudia Winkleman for getting her a job on Doctor Who
The 30-year-old said her guest appearance in The Well episode of the BBC sci-fi series earlier this year, which was rewritten for her, was a dream come true in an interview with Big Issue. She said: 'Doctor Who was on my bucket list. 'I really wanted to be on it, I saw Russell T Davies at an awards ceremony and Claudia Winkleman forced me to speak to him. 'So it's thanks to Claudia that I got the job. 'It was already written, so they changed it to make her a deaf character, but that's great. 'I don't want every character to be defined by their deafness.' in the interview, Ayling-Ellis also shared her concerns over government welfare cuts to disability benefits announced earlier this year. She explained: 'My big issue at the moment is the cuts to disability benefit, that's such an important issue for so many people. 'There's a lot of fear around. 'Rather than making cuts, they need to support disabled people better. 'People making (benefit) assessments need to have better disability awareness. 'I remember mine years ago, they wanted a telephone call to assess my need for Disability Living Allowance. 'I'm deaf, I can't hear you on the phone, and if I'd talked through an interpreter, they would say I can live independently and I'd have got nothing.' The ex-EastEnders star is now preparing to take on the lead role in ITV detective thriller Code Of Silence, which she is also an executive producer on. Speaking about her new role, she said: 'I'm not doing the producer job because I'm famous or whatever, I'm doing it because I'm deaf and I do all this extra work anyway. 'Every single project I do, I have to be the one saying, 'can we make sure we do this?', I always get that responsibility. 'So I wanted to be involved from the beginning of the process and not leave it all until the first day on set.' The full interview with Ayling-Ellis can be found in this week's Big Issue, available from local vendors, and online at
South Wales Guardian
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South Wales Guardian
Rose Ayling-Ellis thanks Claudia Winkleman for getting her a job on Doctor Who
The 30-year-old said her guest appearance in The Well episode of the BBC sci-fi series earlier this year, which was rewritten for her, was a dream come true in an interview with Big Issue. She said: 'Doctor Who was on my bucket list. 'I really wanted to be on it, I saw Russell T Davies at an awards ceremony and Claudia Winkleman forced me to speak to him. 'So it's thanks to Claudia that I got the job. 'It was already written, so they changed it to make her a deaf character, but that's great. 'I don't want every character to be defined by their deafness.' in the interview, Ayling-Ellis also shared her concerns over government welfare cuts to disability benefits announced earlier this year. She explained: 'My big issue at the moment is the cuts to disability benefit, that's such an important issue for so many people. 'There's a lot of fear around. 'Rather than making cuts, they need to support disabled people better. 'People making (benefit) assessments need to have better disability awareness. 'I remember mine years ago, they wanted a telephone call to assess my need for Disability Living Allowance. 'I'm deaf, I can't hear you on the phone, and if I'd talked through an interpreter, they would say I can live independently and I'd have got nothing.' The ex-EastEnders star is now preparing to take on the lead role in ITV detective thriller Code Of Silence, which she is also an executive producer on. Speaking about her new role, she said: 'I'm not doing the producer job because I'm famous or whatever, I'm doing it because I'm deaf and I do all this extra work anyway. 'Every single project I do, I have to be the one saying, 'can we make sure we do this?', I always get that responsibility. 'So I wanted to be involved from the beginning of the process and not leave it all until the first day on set.' The full interview with Ayling-Ellis can be found in this week's Big Issue, available from local vendors, and online at
The Herald Scotland
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Star is born with dazzling turn by Rose Ayling-Ellis
**** Rose Ayling-Ellis is having a moment. Make that more than a moment. Since winning Strictly she hasn't put a foot wrong, and this week finds herself on the cover of Radio Times, the acting equivalent of fronting Vogue. All this as she plays her first lead role in the crime thriller Code of Silence. It's an above-par piece, but by far the best thing about it is Ayling-Ellis as a deaf canteen worker who becomes a lip reader on a robbery investigation. Across six parts, viewers get to enjoy a satisfyingly twisty yarn from writer Catherine Moulton (Baptiste, Hijack) and watch a star of the small screen being formed. Ayling-Ellis plays Alison Brooks, a young woman washing pots and scrubbing ovens in a local branch of His Majesty's constabulary in Canterbury, Kent. Called upstairs to CID one day, she is told 'all our lip readers are busy on other jobs' and would she mind helping out? There is no time to stop and ponder whether that would happen because too much else is going on. Like Alison, the viewer is dropped into the middle of a fast-moving investigation and must crack on regardless. Alison is thrilled by the praise for her efforts. In another life, this young woman might be rising through the CID ranks herself instead of being paid minimum wage to help them out now and then. Not that Moulton, herself hearing-impaired, is so crass as to point this out. Instead, the look on Alison's face says it all. Used to feeling invisible and excluded by her disability, she is now 'seen' and accepted. She could get used to this. 'I don't want to be hearing,' she says. 'I just want them to be a bit deaf.' The same lightness of touch is seen in the way Code of Silence deals with lip-reading. As Alison watches, words and parts of words float onto the screen before swimming into focus. Context is everything and effort is required. Back to the robbery, and no sooner has the nice woman detective (Charlotte Ritchie from Ghosts) warned Alison not to become too involved than she is crossing red lines left, right and centre. Again, Moulton is on the case, steering the viewer away from asking too many questions by throwing them another sub-plot or semi-plausible explanation. A clever script and a strong cast aside, it is up to Ayling-Ellis to do most of the heavy lifting on the acting front. If we don't believe in her character, the house of cards starts to wobble. What a performance she turns in. What a face. Delicately drawn yet highly expressive, it is made for the small screen. Put her in any scene and the eye is naturally drawn to her, a definition of star quality if ever there was one.
Elle
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Rose Ayling-Ellis on 'Code Of Silence': 'You're Telling Alison To Stop. I'm Telling Her, "No, Keep Going."'
Rose Ayling-Ellis is waxing lyrical about the black, studded Speaking to Ayling-Ellis, 30, you understand she has to spend a lot of time defying (or, at least, correcting) people's expectations, which can be exhausting. That's not to say she shies away from the challenge. This month, she's taking on her first leading role, as Alison in ITV's Code of Silence . Working in the canteen at a police station, Alison is called in to do some lip reading, but she soon steps over the line, and is pulled deeper into the investigation than she intended. Alison, she says, is 'cheeky': her choices are questionable, but Ayling-Ellis loves her determination. 'The lack of opportunity she gets in life means she is grabbing this opportunity,' she says. 'I can relate a lot to Alison. [The viewer is] telling her to stop, but I'm telling her, 'No, keep going.'' Read Next Alison's agency is refreshing, and Ayling-Ellis draws parallels between her life and her character's. After feeling spurned by acting schools and agents, she found her first roles via a Deaf-actors group on Facebook. Her career boomed: she became the first Deaf actor to play a regular character on Eastenders ; the first Deaf contestant on Strictly Come Dancing ; the first person to sign a CBeebies Bedtime Story in British Sign Language; the first Deaf presenter to work live on the Paralympic Games; and she helped produce the first Barbie doll with a hearing aid. Being 'first' can be exciting, but surely it's tiring to always lay the path? 'It's a bit of both. I love my job, I love a challenge, I love trying new things,' she says. 'But it is quite sad to be the first, and I'm hoping there'll be more people to be the first.' She adds: 'I'm doing it because I try to open the door for everybody else, and that does put pressure on a bit. If I was hearing, maybe I wouldn't be doing such a range of jobs.' And it is a range. The first half of 2025 was packed before Code of Silence even hit screens. She starred in BBC series Reunion, had a huge part in Doctor Who , fronted BBC documentary Old Hands, New Tricks and released a children's book: Marvellous Messages . 'I just need to ride the wave while it's still there,' she says. It sounds like it could get overwhelming, but Ayling-Ellis says she rarely gets recognised – though she wonders whether people know how to communicate with her. She takes the bus, looks after her plants and shares roast dinners and game nights with friends. According to Ayling-Ellis, these friends would describe her as 'chaotic, but very determined'. 'I think they know, when they hang out with me, we'll have fun,' she says. 'We're just silly. I love being silly.' She likens her life to Hannah Montana: the Miley Cyrus show where a teen girl lives a double life as a famous pop-star. 'At home, I'm just Rose,' she says. 'When I see my family and friends, I don't feel like it's all happening to me.' With her book being published in the US and Code of Silence airing on the other side of the Atlantic too, it'd be customary to ask her if Hollywood is the next stop. She doesn't rule it out, but it doesn't seem like something she's considered. 'I think I'm very in my bubble,' she says, before noting: 'American Sign Language is different from British, so maybe I need to learn.' It's a reminder that an ableist world doesn't just ignore the challenges Deaf people face; it can also be completely unaware of what obstacles there could be. At her Alternative MacTaggart Lecture, she made headlines, saying: 'I am disabled because I live and work in a world that disables me'. 'The thing is,' she explains, 'every time I go to a new job, it's everybody's first time working with a Deaf person. But it's not my first time working with people who don't know how to work with Deaf people. So I'm always repeating myself.' A busy year means more spotlight, and her hope for the future (along with a holiday in Japan) is that being in that spotlight won't always include conversations about Deafness. But we're back in that grey area, because, when asked what brings her joy, or what helps her relax, she falters. 'I'm not used to talking about myself, or about things that aren't about being Deaf,' she says. 'I talk about all this stuff because it's a subject I know very deeply and I'm very comfortable talking about it. So when it's like, 'Hey, what do you like? What food do you like?' my mind goes blank. I think it's important to talk about being Deaf, but sometimes it's nice not to talk about that, too.' She remembers visiting a school where all the teachers knew sign language and expecting the Deaf kids to tell her how great that was, in the same way she notes when productions and parts feel inclusive. In fact, they just talked about their love of history. 'None of them even raised [the teachers knowing sign language], because it's their norm,' Ayling-Ellis says. She hopes to follow their lead. 'I thought, 'Wow – I hope one day in the future, these Deaf children will go to work and never have to talk about what I'm talking about.'' Code of Silence is on ITV1 from 18 May. Hair and Make-Up in main image: Malin Coleman using Vieve ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today . Related Story
