Inside the making of an 'Only Murders in the Building' episode with only one line of dialogue - and why Deaf star James Caverly wants to 'dismantle' the 'tired portrayal of disabled characters on TV'
- This week's "Only Murders in the Building" episode had only one line of verbal dialogue.
- Insider interviewed Deaf star James Caverly about the making of the episode.
- Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Hulu's "Only Murders in the Building."
At the climax of Tuesday's episode of "Only Murders in the Building," titled "The Boy from 6B," Theo (James Caverly), the son of Teddy (Nathan Lane), accidentally pushes his friend Zoe (Olivia Reis) off the roof of the Arconia, finally solving for viewers one murder that's been a focus of the season.
In the seconds before the accident, we know what Zoe and Theo are saying to each other, we feel the intensity of their argument, but we don't hear it. Nor do we hear the thump of Zoe lifeless body hitting the pavement. We are watching the event take place from Theo's perspective, and as a deaf man, he can only see the fatal consequences unfold - he cannot hear the world around him shift forever.
The creative team behind "Only Murders in the Building" decided that they couldn't tell the story of the boy from 6B completely from Theo's perspective - the series' main characters Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) were too central to the plot.
But instead of switching between verbal dialogue and American Sign Language as needed, they decided to make the episode nearly non-verbal.
Insider spoke to Caverly, the Deaf actor who plays Theo; the episode's director Cherien Dabis; writers Stephen Markley and Ben Philippe; and sound supervisor and re-recording mixer Matthew Waters to find out exactly how they pulled off this groundbreaking hour of TV.
The episode doesn't have verbal dialogue - except for one line - but it isn't entirely silent
Sound does enrich the story via an intense score and carefully placed screams and "warped" noises Waters told Insider he sometimes used to make audiences think they could understand dialogue and add intrigue.
But Martin's Charles speaks aloud the only line of dialogue at the end of the episode when he says "We did it," after unlocking Tim Kono's (Julian Cihi) phone to try and get more information about who killed him.
"Framing the entire episode in the perspective of a Deaf person is a subversive act," Caverly told Insider in an interview conducted via email per his request. "It forces the audience to listen closely, but with their eyes instead of ears."
Caverly said to prepare to play the part of a man who accidentally kills the woman he's "head over heels in love" with, he spent a lot of time "hiding myself away in a dark room for hours with nobody around and imagining a scenario where I accidentally killed somebody I fell in love with."
He called his performance "an unleashing" of all of the emotions he had purposefully built up, and called the experience of filming "cathartic," especially when combined with all of the emotions he was naturally feeling because of the global pandemic.
The episode's director used clever camera shots to ensure it was authentic to the deaf experience
"Doing so lends power to the Deaf observer, one who will detect things with their eyes before hearing people do," he explained.
Without such deliberate camera work, Caverly knew that watching the episode would be uneventful for the deaf viewer. It would be like watching any other episode of television.
Dabis knew this episode would be a challenge. But to make it authentic to the deaf experience, she had to get creative with her shots. She also had to find novel ways to place actors so that Theo could see their faces from an angle that felt "organic" without having the hearing actors look into the camera.
"It was all about looking for places, for things to shoot behind and for places for Theo to hide and watch people," she said, explaining that she learned that lip reading is only about 30 percent successful and that deaf people rely on context more than anything to read lips.
Theo's scenes, which was also shot with a "noir aesthetic" in mind, was comprised of "a lot of wide-angle closeups to really show his distress over what was happening to him and around him," Dabis added, so the audience could clearly see emotion we weren't hearing.
Caverly worked with Dabis to ensure that in the scene where he discovers Oliver and Mabel hiding in the mortuary, his character is tipped off by a visual cue rather than "a feeling" that "could be misinterpreted as hearing something," the actor said.
Writers Markley and Philippe didn't shy away from creating a deaf killer intentionally
Philippe noted that when writing marginalized characters, one question always comes up: "Do they only have to be the exceptional minority presence in a corner that's being great all the time, or can they have the same depth and layers that other characters have?"
"Not touching the stove is not the answer," he added, meaning he'd rather go for it and write what others might think is crossing the line.
Markley was clear, however, that Theo isn't "this murdering psychopath," who's looking for someone to kill. Zoe's death is just "the confluence of some terrible circumstances" that "could have happened to anybody," he said.
Caverly says he's now ready for more roles that don't center heavily on his deafness
He's already turned down an audition since filming the episode because he "felt the writing fixated on the loss of their hearing instead of elevating the plot outside of that framework."
The actor is steadfast in his assertion that "true inclusion would mean more disabled people in the writing room, behind the camera, and on the production team."
Hollywood, Caverly added, needs to "dismantle" the "tired portrayal of disabled characters on TV" by including more disabled talent in front of and behind the screen.