‘Inhumans’ Star Gives Details on the Show’s Original Sign Language

With Black Bolt keeping silent due to the devastating nature of his abilities in Marvel‘s The Inhumans, the show had to utilize a form of sign language for the King of the Inhumans to communicate with his queen.

Anson Mount, the actor playing Black Bolt in the ABC series, revealed at San Diego Comic Con that he had developed his own sign language for the character to be able to communicate with. Now, just a few days ahead of the show’s IMAX premiere, Mount gives more details about how Black Bolt communicates in an interview with Rotten Tomatoes.

The actor said that by the end of making the show’s first season he had created a 50-page Google document with the signs giving the mute-by-choice Black Bolt a voice. However, the collection of signs isn’t ready to join the ranks of other fictional languages just yet.

“I don’t think it’s a complete language yet. If the show goes a few seasons, it will [be]. We’re not there yet. If you asked me to a sentence for you right now, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I would have to go to my room, sit down, open up my glossary, translate it and then work for about an hour to get it into my body,” Mount said.

As previously reported, Mount couldn’t use American Sign Language (ASL) because the Inhumans aren’t from Earth and would need a different language. However, the actor worked hard to make sure that Black Bolt’s language was as original as possible.

“There may be one or two crossovers that I haven’t thought about. There are some things that are pretty obvious, like ‘me’ and ‘now’ or ‘here,’” Mount said. “When it was something that was in my head, I want to make sure that’s not a crossover, I would Google it and see.”

Even if a few of Black Bolt’s signs may appear familiar, on the show Medusa is the only character who can understand him. With Medusa not being a reliable translator, Mount admitted that it was sometimes a surprise to him to hear the character getting his words seemingly wrong.

“[Writer] Scott [Buck] would intentionally have Medusa tweaking a line, and I didn’t realize that,” he said. “I would hear it and I would go, ‘Actually, that’s not the line.’ She’d go, ‘No, actually that is the line. You just didn’t read my part of the scene.’ So that was fun.”

Marvel’s The Inhumans premieres September 1 in IMAX theaters followed by its television debut beginning September 29th on ABC.

In Marvel’s Inhumans, after the Royal Family of Inhumans is splintered by a military coup, they barely escape to Hawaii where their surprising interactions with the lush world and humanity around them may prove to not only save them, but Earth itself.