The Silent Hour Interview: Sandra Mae Frank on Doing Stunts as a Deaf Actress

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with The Silent Hour star Sandra Mae Frank about her role in the action movie. Frank discussed doing stunts and how deaf actors are able to be cued, working with Joel Kinnaman, and more. It will be released in thaters and on digital on October 11, 2024.

“Boston Detective Frank Shaw (Joel Kinnaman) returns to duty after a career-altering injury leaves him with permanent hearing loss. Tasked with interpreting for Ava Fremont (Sandra Mae Frank), a deaf witness to a brutal gang murder, they find themselves cornered in a soon-to-be-condemned apartment building when the killers return to eliminate her. Cut off from the outside world, these two strangers must lean on each other to outsmart killers they can’t hear coming for their only hope of making it out alive,” says the synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Sandra, congrats on your performance in The Silent Hour. Your character’s very interesting. She’s a recovering addict. What did you find most intriguing about this role?

Sandra Mae Frank: I loved that Ava has layers. She’s deaf. Yes. But she has so many more layers on top of that. She’s a recovering addict. She is finding herself again. She’s finding a way to live just as any other person in this world. I did really appreciate having those layers. Often we see deaf people as they’re so heroic, they’re so cool. Yes, of course, Ava’s still cool, but she has a darker side to her. It’s like, yeah, come on. I wanna learn more about her.

So that’s where me, as Ava, how I have thought about how Ava would react and how I would move. If there’s certain situations that comes up, what would I do? I’ve seen several films and television shows that don’t really get what it would be like, how the body would react. So I kind of deep-dived into those, did a lot of research, and kind of picked through and figured out what I wanted to do with Ava. So I just wanted to be present with Ava in those certain times. But yeah, it’s really fascinating.

This Silent Hour has some really great action sequences and we don’t see many deaf actors in action sequences. So how was it filming those scenes and really getting to be fully involved in these crazy stunts?

I loved every moment of it, and I loved the action. I love doing anything that is so extreme. You are gonna have to pull me away. They would say, “No, I wanna make sure it’s safe, and then you could jump.” So there was a stunt double that would come in and they would do that part. And I’d say, “Okay, I’m ready. I wanna do this part. I wanna do it.” They would say, “Okay, we have to think about safety and all these, this, that, and the other.” So they would tease me, and I would work out basically. I would wanna just keep working. I wanted to be fully physical. I wanted to be true to the core. So it felt amazing. I was really thrilled to have those moments in the film because not so often that we see a deaf actor in a and in an action film, but we are starting to see more here and there now.

But I don’t know if you know about this. Several years ago it was a certain company that produced [a movie] with a deaf lead, but they picked a hearing actor. That is just a big no-no, that is not appropriate. It’s not authentic or right. So the director of that film, I’m not gonna mention any names, but the director of that film said, “Why don’t you just cast a deaf person? Because how do they do the action. How do they know? That’s why we had to cast a hearing person. So what if we were throwing something at the person, and they needed to duck? And so a hearing person would just be able to hear the word duck. So the actor would just be ready.” The director was like, “How do I do that? It’s a safety issue.”

So, of course, my response is, we have so many trained deaf people, and they have the knowledge. There’s a system that we could do, and we can use with them. We also have laser pointers that we can cue deaf people by turning the laser off. That means go. I also had a device called the buzzer that would vibrate a part of my body that would let me know to go, and there were so many other techniques that we could use. So I hope that this film, with being it action and a thriller, they can see the possibilities that deaf people can have and do have. We don’t wanna be limited by our deafness at all. We can. It is important to communicate and work through all of those navigations.

That’s really wonderfully put. Joel’s character in the film isn’t a professional interpreter. So there’s room for his American Sign Language to not be perfect. What did you think of his ability to get a lot of that down for The Silent Hour?

Before I answer that, I did want to clarify with the interpreter part [in the movie]. It was really beautiful to be able to have those conversations with the writers and the director about this moment. That’s why we did have the character emphasize, and when he says, “I’m still learning sign, I am not an interpreter.” The interpreter should have a clear, absolute concept of and be able to facilitate 100% communication.

So I didn’t want the audience to feel like, “Oh, anybody can just be an interpreter if they know sign.” No, especially when a cop is trying to come and interview you, a deaf person. Maybe just what if the interpreter isn’t skilled and doesn’t get something right? So you have to get a skilled professional interpreter. So those scenes, we were able to figure out what Frank and how he would react and that we played it off more authentically. Of course, he is not an interpreter, but I’m happy that they were open to that change in the script.

So now for Joel and how he was picking up all the sign language. He was able to work with a deaf consultant. This consultant taught him sign language. His name is Anselmo DeSousa. That all happened before the film, and so he was already able to pick up the basics of sign language and already knew it. Then we just hung out together. We chatted all the time, and I’m the type of person that will push you, with consent, of course, to say, “Hey, come on. I’m gonna teach you to sign. :et’s go through sign language,” and he did commit to it. He really tried to figure it out. He wanted to match the facial expressions and everything, and we just made the best connection. It’s not often that a hearing actor that needs to learn sign does that, but it was very nice that he did that.

That is really lovely to find out. You have a lot of really great scenes with Joel in The Silent Hour. How would you describe him as a scene partner?

One of the best scene partners to work with. I was already a fan of his. I have to admit, I did fan girl a little bit. I had my moment of, okay, great, now I’m gonna take that out, and this is serious now. How are we gonna work with each other? So the day that we met, instant connection happened. You know when you meet people sometimes in life and you’re like, “All right, we’re gonna connect right away without even saying hi to each other.” We had that vibe already, and it was perfect.

So when we went through the filming, it was so much fun, and especially through the lull moments where we would just share stories with each other. We would talk about anything. Then, during the filming, I loved that we had some of the same ideas, and we would talk about that, and we would vibe off of each other, and we’d go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that.” We would always feed off of each other. Of course, we were troublemakers on set when we would do some sort of that stuff, but it was so great. I love to get in trouble with Joel.