Kris Statlander understands that doing ASL on-screen sets her apart from everyone else in All Elite Wrestling.
All Elite Wrestling’s Kris Statlander recently sat down with Jaychele Nicole to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about her using ASL (American sign language) to communicate on-screen at times, Statlander said that it came down to wanting to do something different.
“I think it was something that I wanted to do something different,” Kris Statlander admitted. “I don’t actually know anyone that’s deaf. I don’t have a reason to know ASL. I know once I started doing it, some people were raising questions about do I have a reason to use it in my life? And I don’t, I just thought it was something useful to learn. It’s kind of an underappreciated language. So, I figured, why not try something different? And it seems to be getting a really good reaction. I’m not fluent in sign language.
“But I could do a basic sentence like, ‘Do you want water? Are you hungry? My name is Kris.’ Like, I can do all that stuff. But, I originally got the idea to do some side language because on the Indies, sometimes if I was a bad guy, I would do like an F and a U. So, I’d say FU to my opponent and like no one knew what it meant, but I did and it was funny to me. So, sometimes I would do that. And that’s kind of where I got the idea to find a way to incorporate sign language a little bit more just because it’s so different. And especially like if there is a deaf person watching TV, and they actually see something like that instead of just having to read the subtitles all the time. So, you can actually like focus on the action for a moment. I think it’s a cool little way to reach out to that underserved community.”
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What do you make of Kris Statlander’s comments? Have you noticed her using ASL on All Elite Wrestling programming? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
