Why don't they use actors who are native speakers?

[BlackCatShadow]

I've been watching The Serpent (no spoilers please!!) on Netflix and I'm wondering why they cast actors who can't speak a language in these parts. I get Jenna Coleman looks the part but surely they could have found an actress in the whole of Quebec who would have done. The same for the Dutch guy, why cast someone who can't actually speak Dutch?

I don't speak Spanish, but the guy they cast as Fring in Breaking Bad could not speak Spanish at all. He sounded awful. Or does it just not matter? Perhaps it doesn't bother people.

I know some actors can do accents better than others but has any actor actually managed to fake speaking a language they don't actually speak well in a TV show or movie?

Colin Morgan, aka, Merlin from the TV Show, has an extremely heavy Irish accent, although in Merlin, this doesn’t come across at all, it was very English. I watched a documentary and apparently he made the decision not to speak in his native accent as Katie McGrath (Morgana) is also Irish and he thought more than one Irish accent in the four predominant characters would be too much for a story set in Dark Age Britain.

@ElspethFlashman

And yeah, the Gus Fring casting is notorious for his terrible accent.

They definitely knew his provinance though, they just didn't care he wasn't actually Mexican at all. I guess they thought all Spanish sounds the same all over the world?

Of course they didn’t care that Esposito wasn’t Mexican, as Gus Fring was Chilean! Chilean Spanish is renowned for sounding very different from other dialects, so maybe they were trying to play on that.

I am painfully reminded of David Boreanaz in Buffy completely failing to do an Irish accent.

But accents are hard. I can't do a Dutch accent either - and I am Dutch. I've been bilingual for 43 years. When I speak English, I sound English. When I speak Dutch, I sound Dutch. I can't blend them for toffee.

@DrChrisWhitty

I had no idea the actor that played Gus Fring couldn't speak Spanish. His full name is Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito so the casting team may have made an assumption

Apparently he’s Danish. I think he’s a great actor and he was good in the role but his Spanish was just horrible. Weirdly, it gets better in Better Call Saul which seems odd as it’s supposed to be a prequel.

In Game of Thrones, the accents were everywhere but I guess it’s a fictional world, so doesn’t matter that much.

You're right OP, it's lazy casting. There are plenty of actors around who can speak more than one language. As someone (not an actor) who can speak several languages fluently, it can be really grim enduring languages and accents being slaughtered. It puts me off completely.

In Game of Thrones, the accents were everywhere but I guess it’s a fictional world, so doesn’t matter that much.

Unlike Lord of the Rings, where the accents all wildly vary within one Shire. And not like Harry Potter, where everyone is from the Home Counties unless your name is Seamus .

I was thinking this at the weekend. I watched A Time To Kill , which was made in 1995 . It's set in America's Deep South and the lawyers office manager was played by Brenda Fricker . She was very good and did an excellent southern accent but it made me think , didn't they have a single actress in the whole of USA who could have played the part ?
My daughter reckons that American actresses only want to play the part of younger women , and never middle aged or older women

Brumboo agreed about Lord of the Rings. It always amuses me that they chose a cockney accent for the orks. I wonder if Tolkien ever imagined that's how they'd end up sounding

I gotta say, as a New Jersey native, Stephen Graham can do a really good New Jersey union boss, as “Tony Pro” in The Irishman. I had no idea who he was when I saw the film.

One of the best accent turns I’ve ever seen was Matthew Rhys in The Americans. I went to university with a lot of people from Northern Virginia in the mid to late 80s and I swear he was spot on!

@Sometimeswinning

I didn't know the guy off line of duty was scottish until recently.

Stephen Graham would definitely annoy me. His accent is all part of his charm!

I was going to mention Martin Compston but for the opposite reason! His accent is a bit Dick van Dyke, especially in the earlier seasons of LoD.

I was surprised that Martin Compston (line of duty) was Scottish. I only found out because we were debating his height. I don't know why they insisted that Steph Corbett (Line of duty) was a Scouser. There's so many Irish in Liverpool, she could have kept her accent, or gone inbetween. Her Scouse accent is terrible. I say that as a Scouser. They could have easily found a Liverpool actress to play her. I hate when she is on screen.

Watching The Tracker (2010) last night, Ray Winston's Afrikaans accent was good. It's a difficult accent to do. It wasn't as strong as it would have been. But it was good.

@Temp023

And I know for a fact that Orlando Bloom only knows 3 words of elvish..

ToffeePennie, I hope for your sake and the sake of everyone who knows you, that your post is a joke..

It’s ACTING people, Eddie Redmayne can’t ski jump, Keane Reeves doesn’t know how to programme a computer.. all acting!

Reminds me of the film Galaxy Quest where the cast of a sci fi TV series find themselves on a real alien space ship, and the captain actor says to the helmsman actor “take us into the nebula” and he’s like “wtf?”

@Sparklingbrook

In Normal People Daisy Edgar Jones managed to do a perfect Irish accent apparently. I don't know how they couldn't find an Irish actress though I read that they scoured the world.

It slipped a bit from time to time, but she did a decent enough job. Stellar compared to some real stinkers of Irish accents out there in the world of TV and film. Julia Roberts in Michael Collins sounded as if she had a speech defect. Brad Pitt's sounded as if it came from Albania via Texas and Outer Space.

@longhaulstress, Tolkien wrote some of the Orcs, the kind of footsoldier ones, not the higher echelons like Grishnakh (sp?) as using an expletive-laden, crude squaddie kind of language. They call one another 'dung' and say 'Nar!' for 'no'. So while he doesn't write them as Cockney, the screenplay writers clearly had to make a decision as to what they would sound like, and decided to make them Cockney.

(I agree they do sound like Phil Mitchell in a bad mood and as though they're about to say ' "Wossall this then!! you 'aving a larrff?' But the Elves are far funnier. I literally can't listen to Celeborn saying 'Tell me where is Gandalf, for I much desire to speak with him' without giggling.

@mommybunny

I gotta say, as a New Jersey native, Stephen Graham can do a really good New Jersey union boss, as “Tony Pro” in The Irishman. I had no idea who he was when I saw the film.

One of the best accent turns I’ve ever seen was Matthew Rhys in The Americans. I went to university with a lot of people from Northern Virginia in the mid to late 80s and I swear he was spot on!

Apparently everyone was really shocked when Matthew Rhys made his Emmy acceptance speech in his normal Welsh accent.

The scouse woman in Line of duty has THE WORST accent it makes me cringe, so bad, she rolls her r’s in an absolutely hideous way

@longhaulstress

Brumboo agreed about Lord of the Rings. It always amuses me that they chose a cockney accent for the orks. I wonder if Tolkien ever imagined that's how they'd end up sounding

Well considering he apparently took a lot of his inspiration from the Black Country, especially the Industrial Revolution factories inspiring Mordor, I always assumed Orcs were meant to have more of a Bilston-esque flavour to them .

"A bigger peeve of mine is when they set a show overseas and the characters still speak English to each other."
A lot of people aren't capable of following sub titles. We are horror fans and my DD, who has LD's has to miss out on a lot of good films because they don't do a dubbed version.

Re dubbing, though, they don't seem to pick appropriate voices. Marianne was impossible to watch because the voices were too young/old/bad fit.

Jenna Coleman nearly didn't take the past for that reason. I think she did really well, but appreciate those that know Québécoise are very aware that it isn't accurate. They also cast a man in the lead who doesn't look remotely Asian, even though that was quite a major aspect of who he was, which was much more distracting for me.

It happens all the time. I don't see anyone complaining that nobody sounds like a Shetlander in 'Shetland' - well, Steven Robertson does have a hint of it, because he is one, but even that's been modified a lot, presumably so people don't complain that they can't understand him.

@Phrenologist

Who knows? Who knows why you would cast Matthew Goode as an Irishman when his intermittent attempts at the accent sounded like an Old Harrovian having a stroke?

Ok but I secretly love that movie 😂

I suppose it's only obvious to people from the country being portrayed? I couldn't tell you what a Danish accent sounds like.

And while I now many Scots were annoyed by his accent, I didn't know the main actor in Behind Her Eyes wasn't Scottish

Unless they're taking roles from ethnic minority actors who struggle to get work, I don't think it's a big deal

Yes! I think this often. Jenna Coleman's accent ruined the series for me to be honest, it was so terrible.

Another one is the Haunting of Bly Manor, where the narrator is American but for some inexplicable reason has an absolutely atrocious... yorkshire accent?!

@Juno231

Yes! I think this often. Jenna Coleman's accent ruined the series for me to be honest, it was so terrible.

Another one is the Haunting of Bly Manor, where the narrator is American but for some inexplicable reason has an absolutely atrocious... yorkshire accent?!

Yeah that series was full of inexplicable accents.

I kind of understood why the narrator didn't use the Yorkshire accent as we would have immediately known who she was, but I didn't get why the character even needed to have that accent. She could have just been generic southern like the housekeeper and the cook.

Well considering he apparently took a lot of his inspiration from the Black Country, especially the Industrial Revolution factories inspiring Mordor, I always assumed Orcs were meant to have more of a Bilston-esque flavour to them grin. Now there's a remake I could get behind 🤣 although most of the thread will have no idea what Bilston is 🤣🤣

There's a new Redwall series coming soon to Netflix apparently, and the shrews are supposed to be Scouse, but I bet they wont be.

It might not be the casting directors fault in all situations though — two of us were send to Madrid for work because we speak Spanish (him native speaker, I could definitely cope with everyday conversation and we did some hard work on my specific technical background). The company thought it would be good to send us as we wouldn't seem as 'foreign' and meetings could take place in Spanish. Sadly, we still stuck out like sore thumbs, because I've always had South American teachers and tutors, so speak South American Spanish with a cross between an English and an Ecuadorian accent, and he was a native speaker, but had grown up in the Canaries!

Couple of comments. Years ago I worked as a lowly runner in films and often the reason behind casting is using a known actor as a draw. Otherwise the film might not be financed.

Otherwise, a union actor might be needed. On their cvs it will say their skills and the casting director may take them at their word regarding their skills .

Interestingly, when studying linguistics in my original degree I listened to a recording of James Joyce reading Finnegans Wake. It sounded like a mock Irish man from a 30s Hollywood movie . Faith and begorrah! We forget that language and accents shift and what we think of as a set accent is not necessarily how it would have sounded. Rhymes and patterns shift so Elizabethan London would sound very different to current London. Ditto Peaky Blinders in Victorian era