Super Bowl 2023’s national anthem was sung by this deaf Star Wars actor

With each passing year, the NFL has gone to great lengths to connect the night’s entertainment with the Deaf community. Aside from the prominent names who will sing the National Anthem, the performers and singers of American Sign Language are also booked. And for Super Bowl LVII in 2023, the organization booked one of the higher-profile — but still criminally under-the-radar — deaf actors working today: Troy Kotsur.

Kotsur, who has worked primarily in theatre for many decades and tried his hand at film in the past 20 years, burst onto the mainstream with the 2021 film. CODAThis earned him several awards, including Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The Apple release, about a young woman struggling to balance life as a “child of deaf adults” with her desire to pursue a career in music, also went on to win Best Picture at the 2022 Academy Awards. (But it is somehow severely underrated by people who think it’s too tiny to win such a prestigious award — poo on you, haters!) Kotsur is also responsible for the Tusken Raider sign languages, as seen in MandalorianHe also performed in the film, On Sunday, Kotsur joins country music star Chris Stapleton on the field to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Kotsur isn’t the only deaf performer to look out for at Super Bowl LVII. The pregame entertainment will see Colin Denny, who is from the Navajo Nation in Arizona, perform “America the Beautiful” with R&B singer Babyface. A National Association of the Deaf release said that his rendition would include ASL as well as North American Indian Sign Language.

New to the game this year is a performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” sung by Sheryl Lee Ralph of Abbott Elementary fame. Justina Miles is a Philadelphia-born performer who will join Ralph in ASL. Miles will also perform in ASL during Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show.

The NFL’s work with the Deaf community has met a fair share of controversy; it’s one thing to hire artists to perform in ASL, and another to give them a visible platform for the world to see, as many have pointed out in recent years. But with a rise in prominence of deaf artists in film, TV, and music, there’s reason to think the spotlight is big enough for all involved. You should really, seriously look out CODA.