EastEnders star Rose Ayling-Ellis is right – disabled people are more than tokens

EastEnders actor Rose Ayling-Ellis is weary of playing the “token deaf character”, which shouldn’t be a revolutionary statement.

In her landmark Alternative McTaggart speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival, she warned that the TV industry needs more realistic storylines for disabled people.

After all, being disabled is a complex, nuanced human experience.

The actor said the soap often had unrealistic details and scenes that conflicted with and contradicted her lived experience: “They will write my characters who are in a room with a big group of people arguing with each other, following everything that is being said and even repeating things back to them.

“Or they will write my character as lipreading someone from impossibly far away – like I have a superpower, which is not realistic at all!”

Frankie Lewis, EastEnders

Evie, who has progressive acquired bilateral hearing loss, is a long-time fan of EastEnders. She observes that she cried watching the speech – it was unrestrained, and it felt personal, saying: “It’s so honest and open and vulnerable, and she says all the things deaf people so often think but don’t say.”

On the blatant falsehoods and misrepresentations of deaf life and experience, Evie admires Rose for speaking out and ensuring that the TV industry is accountable. Still, she feels frustrated for those who have been saying these things for months – or even years – on various platforms, contacting EastEnders through different channels to raise their concerns that Frankie Lewis’s perspective doesn’t delve into the day-to-day truth of being deaf.

Evie points out: “Hearing viewers think those details are accurate. We can lipread from a distance, hear a conversation across a room or follow one in a crowd – most of us can’t. Misrepresentation does real damage. It’s a shame it took this to bring it to light.”

In response to Ayling-Ellis’s speech, a BBC spokesperson said: “Rose delivered an incredibly powerful and important Alternative MacTaggart. We are committed to taking action and removing the barriers faced by deaf and disabled people across all of our productions.”

Evie’s reality, and the reality for those who have spoken out on social media platforms and have tried to reach out to EastEnders, is that these small, edited-down moments have real-world consequences.

Frankie Lewis, EastEnders

We’re still being penned by others, condensed, and cut down into mass-marketed stereotypes. Soaps have evolved over the decades. They have worked to capture the silhouette – the outline. Having accomplished this, they must now lean more fully into reality: complex, nuanced human experience.

In her speech, Ayling-Ellis pointed to what many disabled people believe is the most effective way of improving representation – to create 3D characters to reflect 3D lives. “You can’t write about deaf people without a deaf person’s input. Nothing about us without us. A consultant should be involved at all stages when working with deaf people.”

As Evie declares: “Hearing people write what makes good TV, but not what makes accurate TV for our lived deaf experience.”

More broadly, the entire disability community has been failed by a system which churns out what non-disabled audiences have been taught to expect: easy, lazy, convenient removable disability.

The only way to change this is to consult the disabled community wholly: be detailed, conscious, careful, and well-researched.

Frankie Lewis, EastEnders

The relationship between the disabled community and the TV industry is already strained. We have been told for generations that we don’t need to be fully represented – or fleshed out.

Not just by scripts which edit out the reality of disabilities but by the practice of “cripping up” (non-disabled actors playing disabled roles), an approach which has been common throughout TV and film history.

As Dr Kirsty Liddiard from the University of Sheffield notes: we should always ask why roles aren’t going to people with disabilities – as employment opportunities for disabled actors, artists, and creatives were, and are, “undermined” by the practice.

Ayling-Ellis sheds further light on the modern reality of a lack of employment opportunities for disabled actors. “I had to break through countless barriers to get to where I am. It’s been a lonely, upsetting journey, and whilst winning Strictly was an amazing experience, it shouldn’t be allowed to conceal the hardships I have been through to get here.”

Rose Ayling-Ellis, Giovanni Pernice, Strictly Come Dancing 2021 winners

Strictly was the catalyst for change in her career – and it has given her a vital platform – but the hardships are obvious, and we shouldn’t minimise her efforts – or the struggles of those who simply don’t have those opportunities.

Other young disabled actors will miss opportunities because they will not have an agent. After all, no-one will think they can get enough work. They won’t go to drama school because it is inaccessible, and they won’t have enough experience as scripts are rarely written for deaf actors. These were her experiences, but the system replicates them for all disabled people.

“How is a young deaf actor supposed to get their foot in the door when the door is firmly shut on them from the start?”

Ayling-Ellis stressed that being deaf is her “proudest identity” but that the non-disabled gaze doesn’t see it: “I am disabled because I live and work in a world that disables me.”

Emmerdale actor James Moore, who has cerebral palsy, agrees that some problems exist within the TV industry. Still, he has been pleased to see Emmerdale doing exceptional research, their willingness to collaborate, and the resulting honesty of disability on screen.

“I can always talk to the writers if I see something that bugs me. Of course, we need more representation, not just on the soap but all TV – but we are getting better!”

Matty Barton and Ryan Stocks in Emmerdale

So much of how we see ourselves can be positively or negatively influenced by what we see on TV. Disabled people note that seeing someone with their disabilities – their proudest identities – has often been a game changer personally. One of the most frequent examples given: James Moore’s character Ryan Stocks.

Moore says those reactions move him: “That touches me, ’cause I had that moment watching Breaking Bad, so [it touches me] a lot that people have that moment with my work.”

Soaps have improved disability representation over generations. But there is still more to do. We have the blueprint in Rose Ayling-Ellis’s words and the feedback from many other disabled voices.

It shouldn’t be a radical act to suggest that disabled people deserve to see themselves reflected on screen – not as tokens or stereotypes. But as complex, nuanced human beings. We should all be done with shallow tokenism and move on – to collaboration.

EastEnders airs on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7.30pm on BBC One. The show also streams on BBC iPlayer.

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