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?

The only non-South African who has ever done a real English-speaking South African accent in an international film is Leo de Caprio in Blood Diamonds. Everyone else always, always gets it so wrong. So jarring. There are many great SA actors, why not use one?

Peaky blinders is awful for this. So bad I actually had to stop watching it.

Martin Compton (Compston?) In line of duty is fucking awful.

Why could they not just let him speak his native Scottish? Its so jarring.

I disagree completely and think it doesn't matter. Most if the things you refer to are English films and productions, with only a tiny bit of accents.

@Oblomov21

I disagree completely and think it doesn't matter. Most if the things you refer to are English films and productions, with only a tiny bit of accents.

I guess it only matters if it's an accent that you are familiar with, and it's so bad that it detracts from being able to get into whatever it is you are watching. So because most of the world won't care, it's not seen as important.

I guess it only matters if it's an accent that you are familiar with

Blessings of being a non native english speaker who does not know how many accents are supposed to sound😂 yay

YANBU OP! The worst for me has to be any TV production set in N Ireland. Approx 1% of the cast is actually N Irish, the rest sound like angry leprechauns AND directors seem not to care if characters launch halfway into Irish accents? (spoiler - they're totally different)

Annoying when I know our film industry is booming.....just use local actors or decent voice coaches. Even Jimmy Nesbit in the recent Bloodlands sounded ridiculous, his accent was so hammed up - he's from Ballymena FGS

Mel Gibson in Braveheart was painful and of course there was always Dick Van Dyke!
At least there is usually an attempt at regional accents, I recently watched Spring and Port Wine, 1979, for nostalgic reasons and it was hilarious listening to the likes of Hannah Gordon trying to be Northern.

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

Err... surely being able to do accents/speak dialogue is a pretty basic part of ACTING?

Eddie Redmayne can’t act, either 😂

Morven Christie had a convincing accent in The Bay, I hadn't actually realised she was Scottish until I Googled her after watching.

And James Marsters in Buffy, never occured to me that he wasn't English even though he was hamming it up.

Gerard Butler's accent in PS I Love You is atrocious

@TimeQuest01

I agree. I’m British but married to a Frenchman and living in French-speaking Switzerland. I am really struggling to get my kids to speak English. I spent ages last night attempting to get DS (5) to hear and pronounce the difference between ‘Th’ as in thirty and ‘F’ in forty.

He got frustrated, cried and said he didn’t want to speak English (in French). I told him that he won’t get far in the world with only French, but he’s too young to grasp the importance just yet. It’s a battle 😫

I remember someone commented on what excellent Danish Alicia Vikander spoke in A Royal Affair She doesn't sound Danish, she sounds like a Swede speaking Danish. Just in case you thought it was something restricted to the English speaking world.

In answer to your question, OP, I give you...
Jodie Comer in Killing Eve. The range of accents she did in her role as Villeneuve was amazing. In one scene I laughed out loud, as she sounded exactly like my DD ( Home Counties/London accent)

What I didn’t understand about A Royal Affair was why Alicia Vikander was speaking Danish at all. Her character was an English royal from a family with German ancestry that still spoke German. The doctor she had the affair with was German - why wouldn’t they just have spoken German with one another? I suppose she’d have had to learn some Danish to communicate with her husband and children but probably not to the level of complete fluency?

Jodie Comer's accents often get brought up and she's talented but she doesn't sound like a native speaker of the foreign languages. I mean in Russia nobody would take her for a Russian, they'd wonder where she came from and how come her Russian is so good. IMO her "speaking English with a Russian accent" accent was a little off too, purely from the perspective that if your USP is that you're great with languages then your accent isn't like that - but I suspended disbelief there and went with individuals are different. She's very good though and I wouldn't have reacted if they didn't try to sell her as Russian native, iyswim.

Had to go on Youtube and listen to Alicia Vikander's Danish - I agree, there are several things she says where you can see she's not fully able to garble sounds in a true Danish fashion. The Swedish does shine through.

@Flocondeneige same situation. I wouldn't force it and put him off. It falls into place naturally if you spend some time in an Anglo environment.

@KeflavikAirport

That’s what I’m worried about though; we never really do spend much time in an Anglo environment. My colleague had the same issue with his twin daughters and Italian. Eventually at age 8, he moved them to an Italian school in Geneva. I hope it doesn’t come to this!

Three weeks with the English cousins is usually enough to get our 90% French-speaking seven yr old back in the swing.

Shout out to Dolly Wells who played Sister Agatha in the BBC Dracula mini-series. She has a Dutch accent in it, and I (a Dutch person) genuinely thought she was a Dutch actress. It was only when I googled her that I realised she is English.

In the meantime, my main concern would be him building up negative associations with English.

I agree and currently he speaks 100% French. I think I’m going to make DH speak to me in English from now on, so there is more English at home, at the bare minimum.

Unfortunately the cousins are too young to have conversations yet, but hopefully those opportunities will arise on future!

This 'be more real'argument re casting is getting to the point where the argument will become 'why use actors at all? I can do that and do it better'. Which may well be the case. In which case you should become an actor. But . . . we won't need actors because everyone thinks they can do it as well as you can.

Well, I suppose most doctors and surgeons are horrified by the bad techniques actors use and police officers probably can’t stand watching police dramas as they get so many things wrong. So, I do agree that a certain amount of fictional license is acceptable.

I just think it’s strange that they hire a British guy to pretend to be Dutch and put on an accent and try and speak Dutch when they could have just hired a Dutch actor in the first place.