He was this bumbling assistant to her, and we gave him this cute little catchphrase where he would say, “Very good!” all the time. How did that come about, and how do you envision their relationship?ĭevon: Because we didn’t initially have Amaya as a deaf character, Gren was originally a lieutenant-and looking back, we had made him maybe more comic relief than we should have. I also want to talk about Gren, her interpreter - he and Amaya have this great dynamic, and they’re kind of an unlikely pair. And she’s a deaf character - we wanted it so that understanding what she’s communicating here is for the deaf audience. I think even in the absence of subtitles, it really stands on its own. But then the animation came back, and she was so emotive, and it’s so beautiful. The scene where she’s at her sister’s grave-we were worried, because it’s a show for children, that we might lose people. We went back and forth on it, but we decided that when Gren wasn’t speaking for her, she spoke for herself. Some of Amaya’s most intimate moments are untranslated - was that a conscious choice?ĭevon: That was very deliberate.
DRAGON PRINCE AMAYA PROFESSIONAL
And on the more professional side, we had a huge amount of help from ASL interpreters we worked with directly, Lucy Farley and Darcie Kerr, so when we were doing video references in the scenes where Amaya is doing ASL, we could say, “Does this come across as authentic? Are we going in the right direction with the character?”
So many people had a hand in creating this character, from us writing the lines to people doing the animation and every other part of this process, and a lot of them had a friend or acquaintance that they could talk to. And then to get a more personal view, I went to deaf and HoH Facebook groups, so I’d chat with people … It helped us to stay connected and understand their experience as best we could. Iain Hendry: We both reached out to deaf and HoH organizations, which have great online resources that helped us understand the challenges and the way deaf and HoH people approach the world.
In a Reddit AMA earlier this week, Aaron mentioned that you spent a lot of time talking to and working with members of the Deaf community.
We really thought it emphasized aspects of her character that brought her to life in ways beyond what she had already established herself to be … It really just added depth to her character. And then one day, we were in the middle of writing the script, and Aaron had this idea: “What if she’s also deaf?” Coming from Avatar, which had Toph, who’s blind, I think he thinks about stuff like that. And we knew upfront, she’s a leader, people follow her, she’s worked her way up through the chain through fierce determination. Did you set out to ensure you had a deaf character in this universe, or how did that come about?ĭevon Giehl: We knew we wanted an aunt for Callum and Ezran who was in the military, and we wanted her to come back mid-season and be someone who could actually stand up to Viren. Polygon: The Dragon Prince team has spoken about the importance of building an inclusive fantasy world. Polygon spoke to two of the show’s senior writers, Devon Giehl and Iain Hendry, about creating Amaya and Gren, how it feels to watch the reaction to your work in real time, and what they hope comes next for the series. (Although Gren might choose to politely interpret it as “bull droppings.”) She’s as fiercely loyal to her kingdom and her family when Viren attempts to claim the throne for himself under the guise of devotion to Katolis, she calls bullshit. Above all else, she’s King Harrow’s most trusted ally: the woman he tasks with both protecting the princes and holding the line at the Breach. Her appearance in the new Netflix series, created by one of the head writers of Avatar: The Last Airbender, marks an unprecedented step forward for a genre that’s historically had very little representation of people with disabilities, and she’s been met with an outpouring of love from fans-many of them deaf or hard of hearing (HoH) themselves.Īmaya’s deafness is integral to who she is and how she engages with the world - she signs back and forth with Prince Callum, the protagonist, and in most scenes, she’s accompanied by her faithful interpreter, Commander Gren - but it’s by no means her defining trait. She’s also a deaf woman of color who uses American Sign Language to communicate. The Dragon Prince’s General Amaya is powerful, forthright and funny.
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