From James Norton’s ‘terror’ at playing a Dubliner in House of Guinness to Helen Mirren doing an impersonation so atrocious it went viral – why do actors struggle to play people from Ireland?
Putting on a good Irish accent is an art. In the same way that pouring Guinness is an art, actually. And as with all artistic feats, people think, “Well, anyone could do that!” before swiftly finding out that anyone could not, in fact, do that. An accurate Irish accent, for a non-Irish actor, takes dedication, research, talent. And as is the case with all art, failure invites utter brutality from the critics.
In the canon of Irish TV and film, there are sadly more misses than hits when it comes to nailing the gift from God that is a true Irish accent. Bad accents become famous for being bad, remembered for reducing all Irish speech to a monolith. Brad Pitt as an IRA gunman in The Devil’s Own, for instance, was so bad that the year after it came out, the Troubles finally ended. Then there’s Gerard Butler’s bizarre broguish twang in PS I Love You. Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio were both absolutely woeful in Gangs of New York. For every good modern example (the notoriously tricky Belfast accent is pretty much nailed by Jodie Whittaker in Good Vibrations and Maxine Peake in Disney+’s Say Nothing), there’s a terrible accent fail (Helen Mirren in Mobland is so comical it went viral earlier this year). Is it any wonder that Marian Keyes – whose novel Grown Ups is now being adapted for Netflix – recently told an audience at the Hay festival: “It would be so, so nice if they use people who can do Irish accents. I mean, the accents are just … I weep. I am corroded with pain.”
Sometimes a bad accent is the result of a megastar being shoehorned in to an independent Irish production, in a vain attempt to boost cultural relevancy (see Julia Roberts in Michael Collins, the true tragedy of the movie). Even being Irish yourself doesn’t excuse poor Irish accent acting. Jamie Dornan, for instance, is from Belfast, but that didn’t save him from slipping into leprechaun-speak in the dire Wild Mountain Thyme. Without proper research on dialect, intonation and tempo, Irish accents all fall into lazy stereotypes: “Oirish” pronunciation, ending every sentence with “to be sure”, and pronouncing “three” invariably as “tree”.
It’s enough to put an actor off trying. Particularly English actors, who would perhaps be justified in running a mile when presented with a script requiring a Dublin brogue. James Norton was not one of them. In Netflix’s new series House of Guinness, the London-born Norton channels his inner Northsider to play Guinness foreman – and hardman – Sean Rafferty. As Rafferty, Norton shags, drinks, fights, walks in slow motion away from explosions, and even speaks some of his lines as Gaeilge. But it was the accent he was worried about. He told RTÉ last week that the difficulty came partly from the fact it was an 1860s Dublin accent, not a modern one. And partly because Norton was one of the few English men on set.
“I was very aware that I had to get it right, because in Ireland everyone can name an actor who’s messed up the Irish accent,” he says now. “If you masquerade as an Irishman and don’t get the accent right, it is sacrilegious.” Norton doesn’t think the Irish accent itself is the challenge, mind you: “It’s more that the terror and high standards that come with it is a job within itself.”
