Troy Kotsur.Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty
For more on the 2022 Oscar nominations, listen below toour daily podcast on PEOPLE Every Day.
“I feel like it’s wonderful to be able to share this experience with the deaf community and with the hearing community,” Kotsur said via an ASL interpreter. “It’s so exciting and such a blessing.”
“I just felt so touched that so many deaf people all over the community are so excited and they’re all celebrating. It’s so important for the group of people in our ensemble who just happen to also be deaf,” he said. “It tends to just be one deaf role in a film, like many of Marlee’s roles in the past, and so I hope that Hollywood is beginning to be more open-minded and gives more diverse artists an opportunity to tell their stories. The awareness of ASL and deaf culture is such a positive.”
Kotsur added he could “feel the positivity out there” when it came to including the deaf community in Hollywood features, citingA Quiet Placeand Marvel’sEternals.
“It’s exciting to see because everyone has their stories to tell,” he said. “We have such a rich storytelling tradition in the deaf community and I hope that folks are motivated to be creative together. It doesn’t matter if we’re deaf or hearing; we’re just people.”
Marlee Matlin, who costars in the movie with Kotsur, was the first deaf actor to score an Oscar nomination and win the statue for her performance in 1986’sChildren of a Lesser God.
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
With his nomination cinched, and awaiting the awards ceremony next month, Kotsur is already looking toward his next film project inFlash Before the Bang.
The movie tells the story of the all-deaf track team at the Oregon School for the Deaf, which won the state championship in 1986 against hearing schools.
RELATED VIDEO: CODA Actor Troy Kotsur Reacts toSAG AwardsNomination
“It’s a new challenge and I’m really looking forward to it,” he told the outlet. “As an actor…I don’t want to feel that I’m limiting myself. I want to be able to wear different hats and have different responsibilities.”
He added, “I would love to be a director, a teacher, an actor, and it’s really important to do what I can and have options, depending on what’s available out there, rather than limiting myself.”
source: people.com
