The Silent Child's Rachel Shenton on her Oscars nerves: 'My hands were shaking but I didn’t want Maisie to have to look at her interpreter'

When Rachel Shenton climbed the stage at the Oscars, her hands were shaking with nerves. For anyone else, that tremor would only have been a minor nuisance. For Shenton, it meant the star of her film might miss part of her acceptance speech; she was to give it in British Sign Language.

Airing on BBC One tonight, The Silent Child follows a profoundly deaf girl who is – like 90 per cent of deaf children – born to hearing parents. As well as writing the screenplay, Shenton stars as Joanne, an inspirational tutor for young Libby (six-year-old deaf actress Maisie Sly).

Shenton had promised she would sign her speech if she won the Best Live Action Short award, so that young Maisie wouldn’t miss out on any of the action. “I didn’t want her to have to look at her interpreter, and not look at what was actually going on,” Shenton says. 

“Maisie was very pleased I did it, but she says she didn’t appreciate how nervous I was. She seemed very relaxed about the whole thing – which is the advantage of being six at the Oscars. Maisie’s cool as a cucumber.”  

That cool composure helped Maisie to see off 100 other auditionees to land the role. “She has a strange maturity,” says Shenton. “In the audition, she had such a strong focus, approaching it like a child double her age – she blew us all away."

The Silent Child is the culmination of a lifetime’s experience for Shenton. Born in Stoke-on-Trent, she was just 12 when her father lost his hearing as a side-effect of chemotherapy. “It was a difficult period, adjusting our lives to that,” she says. “Afterwards, that gave me the impetus to learn BSL, and it got me involved with the deaf community.” She went on to become an ambassador for the National Deaf Children’s Society, taking on high-profile fundraising stunts –  including skydiving and scaling the BT Tower – to raise money for related charities.

But the idea for The Silent Child came about when she was filming a TV series in Los Angeles. “I lived with a deaf lady who was sort of inspirational. She told me her story, which is not dissimilar with Libby’s – she was the only child in a hearing family. There were a couple of little moments in the film that actually happened to her. For some of the dialogue, I stole directly from her stories.” (Since the film’s release, they’ve got back in touch; “She was cheering very loudly when we won the Oscar, apparently.”)

The idea wouldn’t have made it to the screen if it weren’t for her fiancé, actor-turned-director Chris Overton. “He was the one that urged me to put pen to paper,” says Shenton. The pair hit it off while starring in Hollyoaks together; Overton played footballer Liam, who was briefly embroiled in a romantic subplot with Shenton’s character, a scene-stealing Wag called Mitzeee (with three Es). 

The Silent Child was a step into the unknown for both of them, as her first screenplay, and his first time directing. It’s an accomplished debut, filled with subtle stylistic flourishes. As Joanne’s bicycle races through a rural landscape, the sounds are picked out in hyper-real details; birdsong, the rattle of her wheels, water running through a stream. It lends enormous impact to a scene a few minutes later, when we experience the world from Libby’s perspective, in almost – but not quite – complete silence.

“It’s actually based on the research we did about Maisie Sly, and her mum Elizabeth Sly’s hearing,” says Overton. “They have hardly any hearing whatsoever, but they described it as feeling vibrations - we wanted to try and emulate that.” When someone thumps a table, Libby is leaning on, she hears the impact. Listening to the scene through headphones, it’s a powerfully physical experience. 

Though it’s still rare to see deaf protagonists on screen, sign language is having its moment in the spotlight. “It’s been a great year for sign language in film,” says Overton, pointing to Best Picture-winner The Shape of Water – where the mute heroine and her non-human lover bond with each other through sign language – and Edgar Wright’s heist movie Baby Driver, which featured the deaf American actor CJ Jones in a prominent role.

“It’s great to see more sign language in the movies,” agrees Shenton. “It’s so beautiful – and so visual.” But they both feel there is still a long way to go in terms of representation. “There have been so many films about disabilities that have won Oscars,” says Overton, “but a common theme is that nobody who has a disability has played those characters.” 

As Hollywood stars clamour for “inclusion riders” to be added to their contracts – a clause which guarantees parts for women and ethnic minorities – Overton would like to see the concept expanded to include disabled performers. “It’s not tokenism,” he says. “If we can see more people with disabilities in TV and film, that’s just reflective of real life. I think, in any project I do, I would encourage that to happen.”

It’s not just the film industry where there is progress to be made. Both Overton and Shenton say they are eager to see BSL given a place in the school curriculum. It is used by almost 150,000 people in the UK, but is not available as a GCSE – despite being formally recognised as a national minority language in 2003. Just this month, it was the subject of a heated debate in Westminster. But many parents of deaf children are given no information about it; 78 per cent of deaf children attend schools without any specialist support in place. 

“I don’t think the information is readily available for new parents in the UK,” says Shenton. “If you’re a hearing parent of a deaf child with no experience of deafness or sign language, then it’s no surprise that people feel a bit intimidated by the whole concept. It’s really important that parents get the right support from the start and see all the options.”

The Silent Child is on BBC One at 7.40pm on Friday March 30