Black Rabbit, the new Netflix crime drama miniseries starring Jason Bateman and Jude Law, has already become a hit with audiences since it premiered on Sept. 18. And the success is in no small part thanks to deaf actor Troy Kotsur, who is a formidable and terrifying onscreen presence as New York City loan shark Joe Mancuso.
Kotsur recently spoke with Today about the role and explained why he actually developed “street sign language” to give his Black Rabbit character authenticity.
“Well, when I got the script I started reading it, and you know how New Yorkers talk with an accent that is slang?” the 57-year-old actor shared. “And so now my hands are doing the accent. So I really wanted to play around with my signs. Most of the time I’m right-handed, I would sign with one hand. So imagine I’m holding a gun in my left hand. And so I have a gun on my lap and I can just sign with my right hand.”
“And so imagine, for many years, you’re hanging out with all these criminals and you have to hold a gun a lot,” he continued. You get in that habit of signing with one hand and so I really had fun developing this character and really adding some flavors and salt and pepper to this character.”
“And the most importantly, remember don’t screw with the deaf guy,” Kotsur quipped.
Black Rabbit is set in the seedy underside of the downtown New York restaurant scene, starring Bateman and Law as Vince and Jake Friedken, respectively, co-founding brothers of a Manhattan hotspot. However, when Jake lets Vince back into the fold, he invites danger into their business.
The co-creators of Black Rabbit, the husband and wife team of Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, recently spoke with Esquire and revealed that Kotsur was the only cast member that they “wrote specifically toward.”
“We met Troy when we were promoting King Richard and he was promoting CODA,” Baylin explained. “We spent a lot of nights out together. Troy is really fun, incredibly charismatic, and powerful. When we were talking to him, we were like, ‘What do you want to do next?” He said, ‘I really want to play a bad guy.’”
“So we just sort of had that in our back pocket for a long time,” he continued. “When we were in the writers room and talking about who Mancuso would be, we were like, ‘He’ll be deaf and he’ll have a CODA son. We have to offer it to Troy.’”
Suffice to say, the gamble really paid off, as Kotsur does indeed make a great villain. You can watch the trailer, here.
