Question: You guys both clearly love your characters and love working on the show. When you first read this script, what was it about each of your characters that made you want to play them?

Katie Leclerc: I had never seen anything like what we were doing on the pages of Switched at Birth. It really resonated with me to be true and honest. Even in the pilot we talked about issues related to deaf cultures; the cochlear implants and the uphill battle and the humor that can go along with it too. Because deaf people are some of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life. It just shined a light on a culture that I loved and was familiar with and wanted to share with everyone else.

Vanessa Marano: For me, the moment I truly fell in love with the script for Switched at Birth because when I read it, it was different and I’ve been doing this for a long time but whenever you’re doing a pilot you’re very skeptical. But the minute that we did the table read for the show and the words on the page that Lizzy wrote were brought to life, because she truly wrote for them to be said.

The table read flowed and was beautiful and seeing the actors sign and seeing the actors act and bring these beautiful words that were so different and were about something so unique to life was the moment that I was like, wow, this could work. This is actually going to work. And it did and people I think really responded to that, to these words that were meant to be said and were meant to be signed and to see it together is such a unique, fascinating different combination that you can’t see anywhere else.

Catch the Switched at Birth winter premiere Tuesday, January 3 at 8/7c!