I know deaf people. I have discussed the issues with them I've also thought about them a lot so I have some insights that go a little further than people who haven't had contact with the deaf community.

She [Susan Lucci] was extraordinary. She wouldn't look at the scene until you walked in to rehearse it. It was amazing to me. That's the impression I got anyway.

The difference between deafness and any other disability is that there is no way to put yourself in a position of knowing what it would be like because you can't stop yourself from hearing your own breath or your own heartbeat. You can not remove sound entirely from your life. You can get a sense of what being blind is like by closing and covering your eyes which provides a source of empathy because we can all project ourselves to that. But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't.

There is no relation to sound for deaf people. It is a totally different mental process.

Most profoundly deaf people have speech that is very difficult to understand.

But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't. And I'm not talking about imagining what a deaf person's whole life is like I even mean just realizing what it is like for an instant.

I mean God knows I've done tons of schlock during the course of my career and stuff that's been very low budget and really pressed for time, but I've never had an experience like this. I kept saying to people, "How do you do this?" I said to Susan [Lucci], "How do you do it?" I don't recall exactly what she answered me but it was something like "Close my eyes and think of England. You just do it."