Reunion: 'I hope new BBC thriller will open doors for deaf actors like me' says star Matthew Gurney

The show, filmed in Yorkshire, follows Daniel Brennan, played by sign language actor Matthew Gurney, who was convicted for the murder of his friend. Shunned by the deaf community but not remotely embraced by the hearing community, he’s caught between two worlds. Isolated and struggling to come to terms with his past, he reconnects with his estranged daughter Carly, played by 26-year-old Lara Peake.

Meanwhile, Shameless and Bad Sisters star Anne-Marie Duff appears as traumatised Christine, whose husband was killed by Brennan, and former EastEnders actor Rose Ayling-Ellis, 30, plays her daughter, Miri, grieving for a future taken away from her.

“I’m often the only deaf actor in the crew,” says Ayling-Ellis, who won Strictly Come Dancing in 2021 and was the show’s first deaf contestant. “I have worked with deaf actors before, but very, very rarely, and this one is the first time I had a deaf crew on set. My biggest challenge was, I didn’t have to explain. I had to sit back and let people just get on with it, and I find that really something I’m not used to.”

After so many years navigating the acting industry as the only deaf person in the room, she didn’t realise how much she’s had to compensate and outline what she needed. That wasn’t necessary on Reunion, written by Sheffield-born deaf writer William Mager. “I absolutely loved it. It’s really fun to sit back and just do my work,” she says.

It wasn’t just the deaf crew that gained from the more level playing field, either. “I love being on a bilingual set, and I loved watching the hearing crew catch up with the deaf crew and start learning to sign, because they really wanted to,” says Duff, 54. “There’s something really delicious about signing. It feels very instinctive and generous, and there’s no subtext. You get straight to the point immediately.”

“And the deaf community can be quite direct!” says Ayling-Ellis with a laugh, as Eddie Marsan, 56 – who plays Stephen, an ex-police officer, dating Christine, with a whole host of secrets of his own stashed away – chips in wryly: “Very direct!” Marsan, star of The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe, and Mission: Impossible III, amongst others, adds: “Film sets are wonderful places because they’re collaborative. So anything that enhances that collaboration is a wonderful experience.

One particular ‘wow’ moment for Kent-born Ayling-Ellis was when the hearing crew weren’t allowed to talk while scenes were being filmed. “I’d catch them signing to each other,” she says happily. “I feel like sign language isn’t just a thing to help deaf people, it actually benefits everybody.”

And that includes down the pub. Nottingham-born Peake remembers how brilliant it was seeing everyone mingling after a day on set. “It was a hub of the cast and crew coming together, both hearing and deaf, outside work.

"To start you’d see the hearing on one side and the deaf on another, and then as the night went on, it did start to merge,” she says. “Crew members that wouldn’t really know much British Sign Language (BSL) had the opportunity to learn. That was probably one of the most beautiful, consistent elements of the job.”

Gurney, who has worked in film and with the Deaf Improv Comedy troupe, says working on Reunion has felt pioneering, particularly when it comes to how it was shot and edited. Traditional, “front on” framing of deaf actors – so their hands are in shot for instance – which is usually used, has been axed.

“We don’t have that in Reunion. We do close ups. We do cut off your hands. It’s more dramatic, and this is what we want to see. This is what we’ve been looking for. It has finally happened,” says Gurney. “I’m sure deaf people will be like, ‘Wow, this is a new way of doing things’. And I think for hearing people, they’ll have a culture shock. To be honest, they’ll be like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ Maybe in the first episode, they’ll be a bit confused about what’s going on and how it works, but I think they’ll get it, I think they’ll pick it up.”

Reunion, he says, could completely change the landscape for deaf actors, as well as audiences. “We as deaf people have very rarely had opportunities to be involved in things like this. So it’s really about time that we can show what we can do as deaf people. We can do anything apart from hear,” he says. “It should have been done years ago, but I hope that this will open the door, not just for me, but for other deaf actors behind me.”

Despite a tough year more generally for the industry, Ayling-Ellis says she’s been working “non-stop”, like a lot of deaf colleagues she knows. Her aim is for it to become the norm, long term, that deaf crews and actors are employed on projects – whatever the film or show.

“What I’m really hoping is this is not just a trend and then it goes into quietness and people are like, ‘Oh, we’re not going to make anymore [shows like this] because we’ve already done it,’” she says. “Getting people watching Reunion is more important than anything, because then it can generate that drive to keep making shows – and I don’t want to just do deaf stories”

Reunion has been produced by Sheffield-based Warp Films and supported by Screen Yorkshire. It starts on Monday, April 7 on BBC iPlayer and BBC One at 9pm