#INTERVIEW: DEVERY JACOBS & KATARINA ZIERVOGEL ON MARVEL’S “ECHO”

By Mr. Will Wong

Marvel‘s ECHO is an historic venture in that it is the first time they are telling a story focused on Indigenous and hearing-impaired characters. The five-episode Limited Series debuted earlier this week on Disney+, giving space for Maya Lopez‘s (Alaqua Cox) story to be told as part of Marvel’s SPOTLIGHT series, bringing more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen. The character was introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2021’s Hawkeye, as the adopted daughter of Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). In ECHO, we see her being pursued by his criminal empire.

The red carpet was rolled-out at TIFF Lightbox for a special imagineNATIVE screening of Marvel‘s ECHO. In attendance were Canada’s own Devery Jacobs who stars as Bonnie and Katarina Ziervogel, who plays Taloa.

Ziervogel tells us about her journey getting involved with ECHO via an American Sign Language interpretor.

Ziergvogel: I remember when the casting call went out for ECHO and they were looking for a dead individual in their 20s. I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to audition for this role because I’ve only acted in a few projects before. None had lines like this one would. So I decided to go for it and submitted my audition. Didn’t hear anything for six months, so automatically assumed I didn’t get it. I wound up getting a callback but again there was a three week waiting period, so assumed I didn’t get it. I finally got a call that the Director (Sydney Freeland) wanted to meet with me, and on the day if it wound up being cancelled. Yet again, thought I didn’t get it. It turns out that she didn’t want to meet with me and just wanted to offer me the role. I was so excited and never thought it could happen in my life. So to be in this Marvel production, this has been amazing. This is the best part.

Ziervogel also sheds some light how her character Taloa fits into Maya Lopez‘s world.

Ziervogel: Taloa is a deaf Indigenous woman. She fits into Maya‘s world because she’s both deaf and Indigenous. They decided to make Maya‘s mother deaf so that you can see the generational pass-down between them. You wanna see that she had a deaf family so that she wasn’t the only one in the family. Because we really wanted her to tie into that familial connection. So we wanted Maya to be able to live in both worlds, so that she has that deaf mother to look-up to and also her Indigenous family as well.

Canadian treasure Devery Jacobs has the distinction of having two separate roles in the MCU as Kahhori in What If…? and Bonnie in Echo. She tells us about what drew her to the role of Bonnie.

Jacobs: I actually had no idea what the character was going to entail. When the casting breakdown was originally listed, they had a fake name for her. Her name was Julie. They had some fabricated sides. My role was under lock and key. There was no Script. I didn’t know what I was auditioning for. I knew it was for ECHO and I saw that Sydney Freeland was at the helm and I had the chance to work with Sydney on Rutherford Falls, as well as Reservation Dogs before. So I knew it was going to be something special. And Sydney comes with such a distinct directorial voice. I sent in an audition and was able to connect with Sydney before the callback. She gave me a little bit of insight into the world. When auditioning I had to learn some ASL which I didn’t previously know before the project. The original reason I wanted to get onboard was because of Sydney.

Jacobs also tells us about reuniting with many of her Reservation Dogs castmates in ECHO and how that was different this go.

Jacobs: I come from Indie film. I am used to projects like BACKSPOT (Director D.W. Waterson came out to show support) which shot over 17 days as a low budget Indie-Canadian feature. But getting to go from Reservation Dogs where we shoot every episode over four or five days to working in the MCU – where we have all the resources at our disposal, incredible sets, beautiful cranes, unbelievable choreographed fight sequences – was really cool because it centered on Indigenous communities, specifically the Choctaw Nation.

I’m being spoiled right now and it’s never gonna happen again!

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All five episodes of ECHO stream now on Disney+.

(Photo/video credit: Disney+/Mr. Will Wong)