“She’s deaf and an amputee, but she can still be a badass.”
That’s how Native American actress Alaqua Cox described her character Maya Lopez on the red carpet for the Jan 9 premiere of Marvel Studios’ Echo in Los Angeles.
And sharing the same disabilities as Maya, it’s suffice to say that the description fits the 26-year-old as well.
In a recent press conference, Alaqua shared the further similarities between herself and Maya/Echo: “We both have childhood trauma that we were raised with. It was different, of course.
“For example, as you know, I’m an amputee, so I went through many different kinds of surgeries as a child, and so that made me a warrior in a sense. And Maya, she had the death of her mother and all these tragic events that happened in her life.”
She reiterated that she and Echo are “both warriors, and we’re tough, and we’re badass”.
Echo made her first appearance in Daredevil #9 (1999), breaking the mould by being a deaf Native American comic book character. She subsequently appeared onscreen for the first time as a villain in the TV series Hawkeye (2021).
This time, as the main character of her own show, Echo faces off against Marvel favourites including Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, her adoptive uncle and the man we discover ordered her father to be killed.
“She’s trying to reconnect with her biological family after finding out that her adoptive family, her uncle specifically, betrayed her,” Alaqua shared, adding that Echo hopes to “rediscover family”.
With that also comes a host of fight sequences and stunts, some of which incorporate Alaqua’s prosthetic leg. In one scene in episode one, Echo fights with the blind anti-hero Daredevil (Charlie Cox), who can be seen taken aback when his attacks land on metal. She also favours her prosthetic leg to kick with.
PHOTO: Disney+
“When I got the role, I had a stunt training team. I would go to train about five days a week and it was a lot. I learnt so much as well,” Alaqua shared. “Because, growing up doing sports, there weren’t a lot of stunt-specific things, so stunt training was a whole new world to me.
“And I was able to learn choreography, jabs, fights and those specific moves, and that was so fun and very challenging as well.”
‘Father-daughter dynamic that’s gone wrong’
PHOTO: Disney+
Marvel Studios’ Echo also sees Vincent D’Onofrio reprise his role as Kingpin in a relationship with Maya described by host Seth Fairchild as a “father-daughter dynamic that’s gone wrong”.
Vincent, 64, considers Echo the first time since 2015’s Daredevil that Kingpin has been “best portrayed”.
“And that’s very exciting for me always, because it has a grittier feel to it and it’s a more emotional story with me and Alaqua’s character Maya,” he shared during the press conference.
“And I think that kind of tone is the proper way my character, I believe, lives best.”
Vincent also had praises to sing for his co-star.
“She’s just so impressive. I would like to say it was my technique, this and that, and whatever, but the girl knows what she’s doing. You know, I was impressed every day, and it was amazing.”
Adding that Alaqua was “always there in every capacity” when the cameras started rolling, Vincent said that he felt fortunate to be able to “bring forward this kind of intensity” in the relationship between Kingpin and Echo which may be the kinds of relationship “with some trepidation in it” that people already deal with in their normal life.
“But then you add this iconic Marvel part of it, which is the good and evil,” he added. “And the combination of those two things, it just plays so well because it’s all grounded in real emotions, yet you have these dynamic characters in the situation as well.”
‘Every tribe is different, every language is different’
Director Sydney Freeland also shared during the press conference how collaboration with the Choctaw Nation — which Maya/Echo belongs to — was forefront during the production of the show for two reasons.
“One was to ask permission from the Choctaw Nation to be portrayed, because I feel like what happens with Native and Indigenous stories is that people come in and they say, ‘We’re gonna tell you what the story we’re gonna tell.’ And we wanted to take a different approach and we wanted to engage [them].”
The second reason, she added, was to “create a dialogue” to be as authentic as they could in the portrayal of the Choctaw language and culture. And being Navajo instead, Sydney felt that it was important for the Choctaw Nation to tell that story.
“I think a lot of times people tend to jumble all Native American tribes and cultures into this one big kind of monolith, and that’s not the case. Every tribe is different, every language is different, every culture has its own unique specificities.”
She considered Echo’s story so interesting because the character was first presented as a villain in Hawkeye. However, she added: “Once you start pulling the threads, you look at where she comes from and, ‘Oh, this is a deaf, Indigenous amputee girl from Oklahoma. How the hell does she end up being one of the top-ranking lieutenants in Kingpin’s army?'”
Then Sydney was presented with the question of “what is that like when she goes back home” — and answering those questions, she added, was an exciting place to be.
Echo also stars Chaske Spencer, Devery Jacobs, Zahn McClarnon, Cody Lightning and Tantoo Cardinal and is available to stream on Disney+.