Marlee Matlin wanted to speak when ‘CODA’ won Best Picture

Marlee Matlin has never been afraid to speak her mind.

But at the 2022 Oscars, she didn’t get the opportunity to say something she had been aching to share. In the new documentary, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Matlin discusses her disappointment at not getting a moment to speak when CODA won Best Picture.

“I was very upset when it went down,” Matlin says in the doc. “I wanted to say thank you for supporting my community and my culture.”

In a clip from the ceremony, the documentary shows producers Philippe Rousselet and Patrick Wachsberger accepting the Oscar. When Wachsberger concludes his remarks, Matlin makes her way to the microphone, but it is already descending into the stage.

In additional footage from backstage that night, Matlin spoke to a reporter and elaborated on what she had hoped to say. For 35 years, she was touted as the only deaf actor to win an Oscar, but when CODA won Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur, she no longer had to be singled out as such.

“I wanted to say I’m not alone anymore,” she told the reporter.

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Actress Lauren Ridloff, who also appears in the doc, notes that the words for “only” and “alone” are quite similar in American Sign Language, making “only” less of an honor and more of a lonely moniker.

Much of CODA‘s success was predicated on Matlin’s recognizability. Additionally, she helped make the film as authentic as it is by threatening to walk off the project if a hearing actor was cast in the role that ultimately went to Troy Kotsur. “They wanted an A-lister for the Troy Kotsur role,” she says in the doc. “I said, ‘If you cast a hearing actor, I’m out.’ That’s the first time I did that in my career.”

Matlin’s words backstage were so important to director Shoshannah Stern that they gave her the title of her documentary. “When I watched CODA win the Oscar, I was watching Marlee,” she tells Entertainment Weekly. “And waiting and looking forward to what she was going to say on stage. Clearly, she had something to say in that moment. And CODA would not be what it was if it wasn’t for Marlee standing up and saying, ‘If you make other decisions, I’m not going to be a part of it.’ And then to see how huge of a success CODA is, the largest part is due to her, and to see her not be able to have the opportunity to speak, it’s sad.”

“I did get to talk at the Screen Actors Guild Awards,” Matlin adds. “I was very grateful to have that opportunity, but at the Oscars, I thought I would have the chance to tell my story briefly on the stage on behalf of the deaf community, but unfortunately, I wasn’t given that chance.”

“I wanted to see what Marlee was going to say,” Stern continues. “And then I found that backstage clip when Marlee says, ‘I’m not alone anymore.’ That captures a huge theme in the film that is usually one that deaf people have — we experienced moments together in the film and I knew that that had to be the title.”

-With reporting from Calie Schepp