Reunion star says BSL filming experience was 'almost spiritual'
In the four-part BBC series, which intermixes British Sign Language (BSL) and speaking actors, newcomer Matthew Gurney plays deaf man Daniel Brennan freshly released from prison. Ostracised from his community, he's out to unpack the events that resulted in him being sent down.
Weighing in on the beauty of the filming experience, Marsan described it as "almost spiritual" due to the extra need for awareness on set.
The Ray Donovan star told presenters Gethin Jones and Alex Scott: "It was wonderful to be involved in this.
"Filmmaking is a collaborative artform but this takes it to a different level - to a point where it's almost spiritual because you have to work at communicating with everybody all the time."
It seems his co-star Gurney made quite an impression on Marsan too, who compared him to a Hollywood great from The Godfather.
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"What was wonderful to see is usually characters with a disability are on the peripheries of stories, so they can only be a binary character - either a victim or villain," he explained.
"And what's great about Matt's performance is that he's the central character and the nuance and complexity of that character, both morally and psychologically, he does it brilliantly. I likened him to Marlon Brando, he's amazing."
Reunion creator and lead writer William Magar recently opened up on his vision for the show during an interview with the BBC.
"One thing I wanted to achieve with Reunion was to show that sign language is not just one thing. Sign language can be used in different ways," he noted.
"Some people sign and speak at the same time, and some use sign language solely. Others will use SSC (Scottish Sensory Centre) and add in elements of gesture. I wanted to show the variety of communication methods that deaf and hard-of-hearing people use."
Cast members Anne-Marie Duff and Lara Peake both learned BSL for their roles.
Reunion premieres Monday, 7 April at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
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Childhood is full of thresholds, when memory grips on to history: first football World Cup, first Summer Olympics, first album. For me, that album was '(What's the Story?) Morning Glory,' the 1995 sophomore effort from Oasis. 'Definitely Maybe,' their 1994 debut, was fuzzy; that record's singles 'Supersonic,' 'Live Forever' et al. were before my time. But 'Morning Glory' arrived with a jolt that lit up the gray matter. 'Champagne Supernova,' 'Some Might Say,' 'Wonderwall'… This was culture – history – lived. My dad's cassette was run ragged on the car stereo, the lyrics to single 'Roll with It' routinely mangled by this child of a Liverpudlian – one who had to admit that those Mancunians from over the way were actually quite good. Many others agreed. '(What's the Story?) Morning Glory' sold nearly 350,000 copies in its first week, more than 22 million worldwide to date, and is now regarded as one of the greatest rock albums ever produced. 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'The 1990s now is revered as probably the last great decade when we were free, because the internet had not enslaved us all and driven the world's neurosis to the point of f—king paralysis,' Noel told GQ in 2021. Not much has happened since then to disprove him. Like them or not, Oasis has become something of a metonym for a time past; an impression only burnished by their absence. Since they were last around, the UK has experienced a global financial meltdown, years of austerity, Brexit and a pandemic – a lot of things a lot of people would like to forget for a night. Catering to our nostalgia (or anemoia in the case of younger fans), this summer Oasis have so far played an unchanged setlist culled almost exclusively from their '90s albums, transporting us back to the age of pagers and VHSs. Where 'sitting here by the phone' was a lyric that conjured a specific image, and we were blissfully ignorant that the water lapping at the shores in 'Champagne Supernova' was full of microplastics. Inside Wembley, time concertinaed in on itself. A sea of bucket hats, that quintessential '90s headwear, stretched out from the stage. Beer-soaked Adidas Gazelles jostled for space in the standing area. At the bar, two men wearing t-shirts from Oasis' legendary Knebworth shows – one vintage, the other too crisp and white to be from the summer of 1996. All that, and hearing Liam belt out 'Live Forever,' was almost enough to make the intervening years melt away… Almost. That's more than can be asked of any band. But for a brief moment at least, the spirit of the '90s was back. And the scene, well, it was f—king biblical. Oasis plays additional shows in London over the weekend before the sold out tour visits Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Argentina and Chile, concluding in Brazil in November.
