Is Alaqua Cox Deaf In Real Life From Echo? She Represents More Than 1 Community
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She made her first appearance in 2021’s Hawkeye and fans were quick to notice there was something different and amazing about her when she communicated through ASL. Now as the star of her own show, everyone wants to know if Alaqua Cox is deaf in real life from Echo.
The Disney+ series premiered on January 9, 2024, and spotlights the character Maya Lopez as she’s pursued by Wilson Fisk’s criminal empire. “In Hawkeye, Maya was a villain,” said director Sydney Freeland in a press release for the show. “And while she’s our protagonist in Echo, we wanted to embrace those darker sides and flaws within the character who is on an extremely emotional journey trying to navigate the pent-up anger inside her. She’s a very nuanced character with culture and ancestry in the Choctaw community which is something we hadn’t seen before.”
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Cox left her home on the Menominee Indian Reservation in Keshena, Wis., to join the Hawkeye cast a few years ago. “When I jumped into the Marvel world, it was a big transition for me, but I was so grateful for the opportunity and journey,” the actor said, who learned about plans for Echo while filming Hawkeye.
“I felt so overwhelmed and shocked because it was a lead role in my second project which seemed kind of crazy. I remember telling my family and it just meant so much because it gives Indigenous people a leading character and real representation in an authentic way. It feels amazing to be able to have the opportunity inspire and empower a future generation of people.” In fact, she’s breaking several representation glass ceilings by being cast in the MCU show, so here’s if Alaqua Cox is deaf in real life from Echo.
Is Alaqua Cox deaf in real life from Echo?
Alaqua Cox from Echo is deaf in real life. Not only that, she’s the first Indigenous lead in a Marvel series and uses a prosthetic leg, which didn’t stop her from performing her own stunts. “Alaqua was extremely dedicated in pre-production and came in every day to train and work with us on building the various fights,” stunt coordinator Mark Scizak said.
“She’s so tough—I had to pump the brakes sometimes because she never held back. In designing the fights, we incorporated the fact that she can do bigger blocks with her prosthetic leg since she wouldn’t feel pain there. She also used it as leverage, holding her leg back to get as much power out of her kicks as possible. Her style of fighting is a very grounded mix of MMA and a bunch of martial arts.”
Cox, for her part, loved doing her own stunts. “The stunt work was so much fun and my favorite thing to do on the show,” she said in a press release for the show. “Our stunt team had such great bubbly personalities and were so enjoyable to work with. In pre-production, I would do stunt training five days a week because I had so many stunts to do on this show. I had to learn so many different jabs, punches and kicks. It’s been a fun journey.”
She continued gushing about working with Scizak in an interview with Screenrant: “It was fun to work with the stunt team, but they were always worried about me being injured, and I would always say, ‘Hey, give me more. I want to do this.’ They would say, ‘No, no, no, we don’t want to hurt you. We’re not going to go full force because we don’t want to stop production and waste money and put everybody on a hold,’ and I totally understood that he didn’t want me to get hurt, but it was so great working with them and learning the choreography. That was the biggest challenge, but it was fun.”
Going back to the press release, she also said how aware she is about what amputee representation will mean for others living the same experience. “I wanted to show people that amputees and people with disabilities can do anything,” Cox said. “Although I am deaf and an amputee, I was able to do a lot of my fighting and stunts and it was important to me to show my prosthetic leg and not try to hide it under clothes. Maya Lopez is a badass, and I wanted people with disabilities to have someone that they could look up to and see within themselves.”
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