Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

165 replies

BlackCatShadow · 14/04/2021 06:01

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?

OP posts:
SallySycamore · 14/04/2021 12:55

Yes, here's a of Shakespearean pronunciation.

IEat · 14/04/2021 12:59

I’m guessing they use more well known actors in leading g roles than someone from Quebec who many many people wouldn’t have heard of. Same as Hollywood, a few actors in many many many films. You’re name sells tickets.

BrumBoo · 14/04/2021 14:02

although most of the thread will have no idea what Bilston is 🤣🤣

Those who do know Bilston would know exactly where the inspiration for Orcs came from #sorrynotsorry

(I am actually joking before I get jumped on Blush).

CirclesWithinCircles · 14/04/2021 14:12

I found The Serpent unwatchable because of this. Interesting premise, but because I speak Dutch, I thought the Dutch character was a fraud and had assumed a fake identity, because he was so clearly not Dutch. Same with Jenna Coleman's character. The production seemed more focussed on producing a seventies vibe than an accurate portrayal. I thought it was awful and gave up.

Same with The Terror, although at least they use an Inuit actress for the lead character. But she is the best of it. The rest of the programme is so heavily stylised, I find it unwatchable. It was apparently filmed during a hot summer somewhere in Eastern Europe, so its hard to take the limited set seriously.

FightingTheFoo · 14/04/2021 14:14

@Stellaris22

I agree. I have a friend who is Russian and they get really annoyed whenever any film or show has actors trying to be Russian. They don't speak the language at all and it's just made up nonsense.
Literally this.

No one has it as bad as the Russians, sorry. They're always painted as villains (on the news and in fiction Hmm) and yet in every fucking movie I see that is someone doing a dreadful Russian accent.

Just wait until the Black Widow movie comes out - it's literally set in Russia. I doubt it has one Russian-speaking main actor in it.

The worst was Kenneth Branagh in the last Mission Impossible movie.

Ffs!

FightingTheFoo · 14/04/2021 14:16

@sandgrown

Do you think Sacha Baron-Cohen was trying to sound authentic as Borat?? Worst Irish accent has to be Brad Pitt .
Baron Cohen deliberately made the accent ridiculous - he was also speaking Hebrew half the time instead of Khazakstani. On purpose. It was part of the joke.
SolasDearg · 14/04/2021 14:23

Thanks @SallySycamore, that's great

SleepingStandingUp · 14/04/2021 14:28

@BrumBoo

although most of the thread will have no idea what Bilston is 🤣🤣

Those who do know Bilston would know exactly where the inspiration for Orcs came from #sorrynotsorry

(I am actually joking before I get jumped on Blush).

Joking but true
JackieTheFart · 14/04/2021 14:43

As a Home Counties English person I don’t normally notice, but Russian accents always sound ridiculous to me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a native Russian speak English before, and I’m pretty sure neither have any of the actors that portray them! Grin

Re québécois - I haven’t seen The Serpent but I watched a video the other day where the dude was from Montreal. I honestly couldn’t identify the language he was speaking, and I did French at uni and spent a semester at uni in Montreal! [grin)

SchrodingersImmigrant · 14/04/2021 14:49

I can't remember which movie it was but they had some character speaking Arabic into a phone and it was just random arabic words and gibberish put together in no partical order🙈
I am trying to remember which one was it. May have been a series🤔 Damn

theluckiest · 14/04/2021 14:52

One one hand, yeah a good actor should be able to work with a dialect coach and nail an accent.

But then there's Peaky Blinders. I'm a born & bred Brummie and couldn't get past the first few episodes as my ears were hurting. Cillian is actually not that bad but, Christ, some of them...Shock

And I don't care that it's supposedly 'older' Brummie. I've met a fair few elderly Brummies and their accents are different but bear absolutely no relation to the abominations of PB.

NeverDropYourMoonCup · 14/04/2021 15:18

Russell Crowe doing his Ray Winstone impression for The Mummy was possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen.

5000 year old Mummy coming to life? I could suspend disbelief for that.

Tom Cruise? Nah, but I'll keep trying.

Russel Crowe doing Ray Winstone? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, I'm done here.

Would it not have been easier to just book Ray Winstone in the first place? Or was he still smarting from the Beowulf debacle?

The only other one where they've clearly wanted somebody else but had to go with the one available was for Good Omens, as they fairly obviously wanted a younger Bill Nighy and David Tennant was the only one who could sort of do that.

Otherpeoplesteens · 14/04/2021 15:21

Star Trek fan here. There are so few native Klingon speakers around that I imagine they have to use non-speakers in those roles.

SchrodingersImmigrant · 14/04/2021 15:22

😂😂

TimeQuest01 · 14/04/2021 15:32

@DrChrisWhitty

This is him, I guess they thought, Italian father, it’ll probably be ok.

I mean, the guy is amazing, but it distracts me when I hear him speak Spanish.

Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito was born in Copenhagen, the son of Giovanni "John" C. Esposito (1931–2002), an Italian stagehand and carpenter from Naples, and Elizabeth "Leesa" Foster (1926–2017), an African-American opera and nightclub singer from Alabama.[1][2][3][4]

BeetleRadio · 14/04/2021 16:07

Anne Hathaway doing a British accent in One Day made that film unwatchable!

bruffin · 14/04/2021 16:14

@SwedishK

It's worse in Swedish productions, they don't even try to do any accents. Wallander is one example (not the British version, as that one makes even less sense). It takes place in the very southern part of Sweden where they have a very distinct accent, although, not a single person in the show speaks with that accent. They all sound like they are from Stockholm. It makes it hard to watch.
Young Wallender was weird , the only person in it with a swedish accent was Wallender himself, the rest had irish, scottish etc despite being set in Malmo, it was very odd
SpeedRunParent · 14/04/2021 16:20

The 'worst cockney accent since dick-van-dyke' award goes to Karl Urban playing Billy Butcher in The Boys. Absolutely all over the place. So bad.

KeflavikAirport · 14/04/2021 16:32

Not sure Jenna Coleman whoever she is is a massive draw internationally Hmm Quebec actually has quite a big film industry. If you’ve never seen Bon Cop Bad Cop check it out, it’s very funny!

GreeboIsMySpiritAnimal · 14/04/2021 16:39

She was a long-running companion in Doctor Who, which is quite popular in the US and Canada, I believe.

GreeboIsMySpiritAnimal · 14/04/2021 16:40

@theluckiest

One one hand, yeah a good actor should be able to work with a dialect coach and nail an accent.

But then there's Peaky Blinders. I'm a born & bred Brummie and couldn't get past the first few episodes as my ears were hurting. Cillian is actually not that bad but, Christ, some of them...Shock

And I don't care that it's supposedly 'older' Brummie. I've met a fair few elderly Brummies and their accents are different but bear absolutely no relation to the abominations of PB.

As a Geordie I found the Billy Elliot musical hard to watch for similar reasons.

KeflavikAirport · 14/04/2021 16:51

Xavier Dolan is an internationally renowned director from Quebec. There’s more to the world than the USA and (Anglo) Canada.

elp30 · 14/04/2021 16:52

@TimeQuest01

It happened with many of the actors in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul that were portraying Mexican people.

When they speak it’s very stilted, you can tell they’ve memorised it and it doesn’t have the flow of a native speaker.

I’m glad they never made Manny speak Spanish on Modern Family. Sofia Vergara obviously grew up in Colombia and it’s her mother tongue.

It definitely would have been strange to have Manny speak Spanish on Modern Family because he's actually Mexican-American and his on-screen mother is Columbian. Trust me, the Spanish is different (I'm Mexican-American) and dear Manny would have to put on a Columbian accent to match Gloria's. That could turn out badly.

BrumBoo · 14/04/2021 16:59

@SpeedRunParent

The 'worst cockney accent since dick-van-dyke' award goes to Karl Urban playing Billy Butcher in The Boys. Absolutely all over the place. So bad.
I was trying to remember what 'horrifyingly bad accent' I'd heard recently, this is it! The show is absolutely amazing, but that 'cockney' accent!

(On a total and utterly not at all related note, I only very recently just found out Karl Urban was the absolutely gorgeous Eomer in Lord of the Rings. Can't remember any dodgy accent then!).

TimeQuest01 · 14/04/2021 18:40

@elp30, I think him not speaking Spanish is a way to show the reality in many households where children are born in America and they don’t get to be fluent in their parents language.

I’m Spanish myself and it’s proving harder than I thought to keep on top of my daughter speaking it daily.