“Oooof, it was rough!”
It has been nearly a month since the trailer was released for Wild Mountain Thyme, and the world has still not fully recovered. If you’ve no idea what we’re talking about, then head right here, but if you’re already aware, then you’re probably asking the same question we are: Who do we need to talk to about this??
Maybe one of the best people to talk to is someone who has had a career both in Irish movies, and in Hollywood as a well known Irish actor, someone who can maybe explain this phenomenon from both sides? And it turns out, exactly the right person answered exactly the right question this week.
Colm Meaney stars in new Irish gangster comedy Pixie (more info on that here), which features some non-Irish actors nailing the Irish accent, and in the run-up to that movie’s release, he chatted to JOE.ie’s movie show The Big Reviewski about his thoughts on the accents and trailer for the now infamous Wild Atlantic Thyme:
“Oooof! Oooof, it was rough! It was rough. Sometimes you see the most godawful trailers and it can actually, y’know, the film can turn out to be okay, so I suppose the jury is still out on that. But it is a peculiar thing because… [John Patrick] Shanley [the director] is American, and Americans still have a very strange view of Ireland. And it’s informed, I think, by the diaspora and the kind of longing for the old country and all that.
“And they don’t, kind of, get or understand modern Ireland and what it’s like, and especially how it’s changed in the last 25 or 30 years. I remember many, many years ago being told that I didn’t have an Irish accent, in America, and this is because I didn’t talk like Barry Fitzgerald [star of The Quiet Man] and the ‘Top o’ the mornin’!’ and that’s what they expect an Irish accent to be, so they inevitably fall into that sort of trap and it seems to me that’s what has happened here.”
Meanwhile, you can check out Lovin’s chats with Meaney’s co-stars in Pixie right here:
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