John Krasinski at down with Rosamund Pike for Variety‘s “Actors on Actors” interview, and the former “Office” star revealed that it was “non-negotiable” that he hire a deaf actress to play his character’s deaf daughter in his directorial debut, “A Quiet Place”.
“It was a non-negotiable thing for me,” Krasinski told Pike of casting deaf actress Millcent Simmonds as daughter Regan in the horror hit.
In addition to providing an organic performance, “the more important reason to me was I needed a guide,” Krasinski explained. “I was writing a movie about a family who had a deaf child, and I know nothing about that. I needed someone to walk me through, ‘What do you feel when you wake up in the morning to be the only person who can’t hear in your family?’”
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Simmonds’ family, he pointed out, was open to answering all his questions, which led him to come up with one of the film’s most dramatic conventions by having everything become completely silent when showing the audience what things look like from her perspective.
In fact, Krasinski recalls that Simmonds’ mother became emotional when he revealed that choice to her.
“To see her mom come up to me crying as hard as she was, was the most moving experience,” said Krasinski.
“She said, ‘I’ve always wanted to know what the experience was with my daughter and I finally have it,’” he added.
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You can watch the entire conversation between Krasinski and Pike below:
