There is a long tradition of British actors doing American southern accents, both good, bad, and plain weird. From Daniel Craig‘s Benoit Blanc accent from “Knives Out” and Jude Law in, well, anything he does. The latest actor to join this list is Robert Pattinson in “The Devil All The Time,” who took not only audiences, but even the crew by surprise with his high-pitched accent.
READ MORE: Antonio Campos Talks The Challenges Of Making ‘The Devil All The Time’ [Interview]
While talking to Insider about the film, which is now on Netflix, director Antonio Campos confessed that Robert Pattinson refused to work with a dialect coach like his co-stars did. “Rob was impossible to get dialect coaching,” Campos said. “He just didn’t want to do it. He was just adamant about figuring it out on his own. He would be like, ‘I’m going to do this thing and that thing, with a little bit of this.'”
Pattinson personally picked out the character of Preston Teagardin to play when Campos sent him the script for the film. But unlike his co-stars, Pattinson was the only member of the cast who didn’t send a recording of his accent work to Campos during pre-production. It was not until Pattinson’s first day of shooting, a scene where Preston sexually preys on the character of Lenora, that he revealed his accent. Thankfully, the accent perfectly fit the weirdness of the character, and it seems like Campos was never worried that it could go wrong.
“I don’t get worried about those things,” the director added. “There was no way in my mind that he wasn’t going to come on set with something bad. I might not have dug it, but it wasn’t going to be bad. I’d rather have someone come with something weird that’s a choice than something that isn’t thought out. So I knew he would come with something interesting.”
While speaking to our own Brian Tallerico, Campos said that one of the most important things when it came to finding authenticity in the film’s period and setting was the accent work. The director said he spent a lot of time with dialogue coach Rick Tipton on the accents for the film, but those conversations could not anticipate the madness that Robert Pattinson and his accent brought on set. And honestly, the film is better for it.