SIGN OF THE TIMES
Marlee Matlin teaches ‘Quantico’ castmates to speak her language
VIEWERS of “Quantico” have, by now, met FBI agent Jocelyn Turner (Marlee Matlin), who’s joined Alex (Priyanka Chopra), Ryan (Jake McLaughlin), Shelby (Johanna Braddy) et al. as part of their black-bag special ops team.
Jocelyn communicates with the team mostly through American Sign Language. “Actually it was never [written in the script that] they would be signing, until the first day we got to the set,” says Matlin, 52. “The cast was fascinated with the [sign] language and a few of them said, ‘Hey, can I sign something?’
“Blair Underwood (Owen) was the first to learn ... and, to my surprise, he was like a sponge and was so fluent with his hands that [the producers] decided he would be signing more than anyone else in the cast.”
Matlin’s arrival on “Quantico” coin- cides as the ABC series hit the reset button, recruiting a new showrunner (Michael Seitzman) and fast-forwarding three years — with Alex now back in the US after a life of domestic bliss in Italy following the Season 2 finale.
Of Jocelyn, Matlin says, “Michael (Seitzman) wrote a character that made sense to me, a character who is deaf but is handling police work and is out in the field — all the things that come with law enforcement.”
The character does have precedence both in real life and on television. “I know there was a deaf FBI agent in the field and they made a TV show about her years ago,” Matlin says, referring to Sue Thomas and the PAX TV series “Sue Thomas, F.B.Eye.”
Still, Matlin asked her husband of 30 years, retired police officer Kevin Grandalski, for some pointers, especially when the time came to use a gun.
“I said, ‘Kevin, how do I hold a gun to make sure I’m safe?’ He used a pencil and demonstrated it to me [at home] on FaceTime.”
As it turns out, Jocelyn lost her hearing after a bomb explosion (engineered by a character called The Widow, who was nabbed by the “Quantico” crew in last week’s Season 3 opener).
“She’s now in a world where she’s depending on her sight,” Matlin says. “She’s helping the team put together pieces of a puzzle they were unable to solve — with visual surveillance, looking at a photograph and making the connections people might overlook. She has telescopic eyes [and is] able to see things other people can’t [see].”
And, Matlin says, viewers will learn a lot more about Jocelyn as the season progresses.
“Suffice it to say we’ll see Jocelyn’s back story, [we’ll] see her before, when she was a hearing person, and after, as she is now,” Matlin says. “There’s a softer side of Jocelyn you’ll see as she gets close to someone on the show. You’ll see her ex-love and her future love.”