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, actually, 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 (Maxine Peake pretty much nails the notoriously tricky west Belfast accent 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 autonomous 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 “thr

The Curious Case of the Irish Accent: Why Everyone Has an Opinion

For a small island,Ireland exerts a disproportionately large cultural influence. This reach, coupled with a recent surge in on-screen Irish representation, means the Irish accent is under more scrutiny than ever. From Helen Mirren’s widely-mocked attempt in Mobland to the sonic landscape of new dramas, everyone, it seems, has an opinion.

“There’s a lot of sensitivity around it now,” says linguist and dialect coach Aisling Ní Mhurchú. “As Irish identity being so widely celebrated,there’s an added pressure. They punch way above their weight culturally, so maybe we’re just more attuned to the Irish accent – we hear it more, so people are scrutinising it more. Everyone in the world has an opinion about an Irish accent.”

It’s true that irish soft power has never been more lucrative, or wide-reaching. House of Guinness, an eight-episode romp through 19th-century Dublin (you get the impression the target audience is, if not American, then nominally “Irish-American”), tells the story of one source of that soft power: the Guinness family. After Papa Guinness dies, the family business passes to Arthur and Edward, who, along with their siblings Anne and Benjamin, flounder or flourish under the pressure of fantastic wealth and power.Imagine if Succession was set in south Dublin, with a smattering of Peaky Blinders-esque debauchery (another of Knight’s creations), and you’re basically there.

simply put, this is a show about green power, communicated – appropriately – through the black stuff. It’s about money, rebellion and Irishness. Although it’s set in the 1800s, the soundtrack features Fontaines DC, the Scratch, the Mary Wallopers and Kneecap. Ireland’s output today, as in the days of the Guinness family, is one of actual capital but, more importantly, of cultural capital too. As Norton points out, Ireland has a loud voice for a small country. A voice we now hear a lot of.

“I think historically people found it hard to do Irish accents as maybe they didn’t have access to them likewise they do now,” says Fionn O’Shea, a native Dubliner himself, who plays disinherited drunkard Benjamin Guinness. “There was a time were people were doing a general Irish accent in the same way that there’s an unaccepted general American and RP [received pronunciation]. The general Irish accent ended up being a hybrid of every county in Ireland. Now I see people do it