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Marlee Matlin & Bradley Whitford | Actors on Actors – Full Conversation

Variety | October 6, 2025



In their Actors on Actors conversation Marlee Matlin (‘CODA’) and Bradley Whitford (‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’) recall their experiences on ‘The West Wing’ with Aaron Sorkin, discuss what it was like on the ‘CODA’ set and how it was getting into character as Stephen Sondheim.

Variety’s Actors on Actors, presented by Amazon Studios

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Comments

This post currently has 42 comments.

  5. @Si_Gil

    October 6, 2025 at 1:23 pm

    Brad's point about Aaron running ahead of TWW's audience and pulling them along accounts for the success, because if (as an audience member) you were able to keep up then you were rewarded with an ego boost that you were clever 😀

  7. @61jax

    October 6, 2025 at 1:23 pm

    Really enjoyed that – really chilled, interesting, and honest chat between two good friends who happen to be Marlee and Brad!!

  9. @SammiLill

    October 6, 2025 at 1:23 pm

    Marlee Matlin has always been one of my favorite actresses, I have physical disabilities and I haven't saw a lot of actors/actresses with actual disabilities out there.

  10. @k1medward

    October 6, 2025 at 1:23 pm

    Question for ASL Signers/Interpreters:
    What did she fingerspell @ 14:58??? She did NOT fingerspell the word "actors" as her ASL interpreter voiced. But due to the blur in the video I can't make out the word. I see "r" "o" "s" "y" "n". Ugh… this is why I hate interpreting from video calls. The blur is challenging for me.

  11. @k1medward

    October 6, 2025 at 1:23 pm

    ASL Signer here.
    I wish Jack would professionally decline to be the centre of attention when requested to appear. He does this a lot. He knows better. His parents are Deaf. There should be a memo sent out every time Marlee Matlin is going to be interviewed for hosts/interviewers to stop asking about Jack Jason to appear or talk about himself (in other interviews he talks about himself). Marlee Matlin has consistently been annoyed by this in other interviews she has done. I understand hearing people are curious and want to acknowledge the presence of another person in the room or are fascinated by the interpreters… it's not about them. It's about the Deaf person, in this case Marlee Matlin. Let's give her the attention. If you are interested in the interpreter and awed by what they do then search about it online and do your own research. These are interviews concentrating on Marlee Matlin's career and person. Anyone in the Deaf community knows this intuitively. We know better. So, I don't care if hosts make "honest mistakes" it's up to Jack to know better. I know he knows the interpreting ethics. So, he is doing it on purpose. Which is unprofessional of him.

    Second, we ASL Signers/Interpreters can catch every thing an interpreter is missing. And Jack is missing a few words… Don't get me wrong. Marlee Matlin is a fast signer so he can keep up with her more than other interpreters can. He also is used to being in the public eye and knows her very well to fill in her sentences and expressions. I just wish, and this is minor really, he would say what she would have said. For example, @ 09:53 she spells out the word, "domestic". It's clear when a Deaf person is looking for a specific word they'll fingerspell the English word for it to be interpreted. You cannot go wrong with that. He does not voice her fingerspelled word. That is annoying. While simultaneous language interpreting isn't a word for word translational activity… it's to convey the main message from the source language… as an interpreter one most do their best to interpret as closely as possible. Especially if the Deaf person is providing you with the specific fingerspelled word they are looking for. I do this with all the languages I know and interpret for. Every word cannot be interpreted into another language but the ones that do have a direct translation for must be used especially if that is what the person wants. However, this minor and I'm just being precious about it. Things can get "lost and translation" and I'm sure the public would like to know what she really said. For me, it's my job to do that as accurately as possible. Nevertheless, Jack Jason is really good as his job and is the reason why Marlee Matlin continues to hire him. She has been asked many times why doesn't she get a woman interpreter to match her. She likes Jack's interpreting. I know this from firsthand experience. I used to work at a public school for a Deaf teacher and she would request me to interpret for her instead of my female colleagues because we just had good chemistry. I knew her all to well to convey her message. I did NOT cross my professional lines as well. Whenever someone asked about me or talked to me I would just interpret it. I dodged answering anything directly. (And please do not ask Deaf people in the middle of meetings, etc. to teach you ASL. They are concentrated on the meeting and didn't expect to show up to it to play ASL teacher. They have other things to do. Take an ASL class or watch a YouTube video on ASL on your phone. You can always just look it up)

  15. @drumbum3.142

    October 6, 2025 at 1:23 pm

    She's GLOWING ,!
    ☺️😊☺️☺️☺️🎨🧸😊☺️

    Honestly. This Special Lady would be Special in Some – Form/Variation/Riff on a SuperHero Film.
    She IS A SuperHero (though).🎨🧸🎨

  20. @paramitch

    October 6, 2025 at 1:23 pm

    A really lovely, thoughtful interview between two wonderful performers who obviously like and respect each other a lot. It makes me so sad, though, to hear that she was so lonely on The West Wing because nobody thought to ask her to lunch (that her deafness was a barrier). But she's so talented, and still so luminous, and Bradley is delightful (and his Sondheim was uncanny — I love that Bradley evoked him by thinking of "a crooked smile on an unmade bed").

  39. @TyrekeCorrea

    October 6, 2025 at 1:23 pm

    Conveyance the experience of encountering music, interpreting and transmitting the idea and influencing what people think in doing so, is such a big deal that of course people are going to control the execution of it. They're not going to let just anything happen when it comes to expressing the idea in this era, because they don't allow spontaneity when encounters with music happen in "real life"!

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