I always felt like Roger’s French accent was like, I’m American and I’m doing my best. And since he owned that, it felt unpretentious and acceptable, vs. a really forced bad accent.
Now imagine being Mexican and hearing basically any character speak Spanish. Breaking Bad being a huge offender.
Only Lalo and Nachos dad in Better Call Saul speak actual Spanish
Just wanted to say this! It bothers me so much! Or Puerto Ricans are playing Mexicans wtf those accents are vastly different.
I'm from Guatemala, but I can always tell. Or when actors have this neutral accent, it's so annoying!
Lalo is so hot beside the point lol but he was born in Mexico, I believe.
Nacho at least nails the first American generation who didn't learn fluent Spanish.
Marie’s accent is a serious low point for me in a series that otherwise paid keen attention to detail. I like Julia Ormond but I will never understand how her casting was approved for that particular role.
I could not tell at all, so I never noticed anything. I remember her mostly speaking English in the show. Her accent sounded a little fake to me, but not enough to bug me.
Learning that it's egregiously bad now, I do care in some sense. But even so, I won't truly notice anything is off if I rewatch the show.
This is an interesting gripe though. My college roommate was half South American, and he would get annoyed watching Breaking Bad because all the accents were wrong for the Spanish speaking characters.
One prominent character is supposed to Chilean, but he said that my very white-person sounding spanish accent was better than his. He did not mean it as a compliment to either of us.
I’m Irish with only a so-so knowledge of French but I just find it incredible that the fact JO is from *the UK* didn’t tip them off that it might not be a wise decision.
I feel like Australian actors sometimes play up the accent for American shows, so we don't think they're British or something. The one Australian show that's been running for a thousand years and every Australian actor has been on it, the accents in that don't seem as Crocodile Dundee.
Ryan Kwanten’s accent as Jason Stackhouse in Trueblood was amazing. Being a Southerner myself / almost no one not from the South gets an authentic accent down - but he nailed it, especially for an Australian
Agree 💯. It was embarrassing listening to them as a French speaker. In a show that paid so much attention to detail, this felt like a rare slip. It's too bad because we Québécois are almost always misrepresented (The Revenant, anyone?) in American productions. I expected more from Mad Men.
At least Megan and her sister were played by actresses from Quebec. Their scenes together represented fairly well 60s Quebec I think (for as much as we got).
The fact that the Québécois were misrepresented so egregiously in The Revenant always bothered me because of how important it is to that story in particular to have gotten that right. With the historical significance and the impact on the growth of North America in general especially at that time period it would make you think they would have tried harder.
She does a really weird accent in Ladies in Black (five ish year old australian period movie) which kind of breaks suspension of disbelief. Otherwise shes such a great actor though
What started as a rebranded tourism department has turned into a controversial issue across Regina met with both hate and support online, and now in the halls of city council.
Earlier this month, Tourism Regina officially changed its name to Experience Regina, with slogans like “Let’s make Regina sexy,” “The city that rhymes with fun” and “Show us your Regina.”
She's an Allophone.
She is bilingual and fluent. She grew up in a Montreal neighborhood with a substantial English-speaking population. I presume that they spoke English at home (her father was a professor at McGill) and that she attended school on an English-language track.
I don't think that she (Jessica Pare the actress) is Quebecoise in the sense that French was her first language.
I have heard her father speak and his accent is quite Anglophone. I don't know about her mother, but she has a French surname and is an interpreter.
EDIT: This is a video of Anthony Pare, Jessica Pare's father. At this point, he had left McGill for a position at UBC.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wgGKYifFsU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wgGKYifFsU)
Megan is supposed to be Quebecoise, who then takes elocution lessons in New York for her English.
Although it is difficult to believe that parents from France living in Montreal during WWII would have named her Megan. (Apparently, Matt Weiner named the character after a friend of his, but that isn't a particularly compelling reason for doing it.)
It’s also bizarre that her sister (the daughter of two cosmopolitan socialists) would be the embodiment of pre-Révolution tranquille Québec. He was sloppy with the whole thing, IMO.
It's driven by the need for story conflict. With Emil vs Marie, he's a Marxist who secretly wishes that he was more successful, while his wife has had her self-confidence damaged by him and carries underlying resentments.
With Marie-France, her character as a traditionalist supports her clashing with both her sister and her mother.
The Emil-Marie conflict is realistic. Marie-France is a bit of a head scratcher for how she ended up that way, as she seems to have little in common with either parent. Then again, some children become the opposite of their parents out of protest, so it may be realistic enough.
She's Québécoise. It's indeed weird as she doesn't really sound natural. She wants to sound French for Americans more than she wants to sound like an authentic Québécoise.
Interesting - my first exposure to that actress was actually through some early smaller Canadian films, so I assumed she'd be authentic sounding in her own realm!
What's really odd is that Matt Weiner refuses to cast non-Americans into American roles because he believes that their accents aren't convincing. And yet he chose to cast a non-native into a different nationality without giving the same consideration.
As a native speaker of American English who has traveled extensively, I find his position baffling. I can tell the difference between variations of English, and a lot of Brit and Aussie actors are able to nail the accent. (I presume that those who can't make their accents convincing aren't usually cast because they can be replaced by others who can.) Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg clearly know this, as they have filmed their war trilogy (Band of Brothers / The Pacific / Masters of the Air) with quite a few Brits and others who are playing Americans.
He cast the dude from The Nanny as an Englishman, and Nanny watchers always complained his accent sounded phony but praised the butler from Texas
I always thought that was funny
Charles Shauhnessy is an English actor and baron, aka the Right Honourable Lord Shaughnessy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Shaughnessy
I'm also a native American English speaker. I'm not a fluent French speaker, but I have taken several years of French class and have been to both France and Quebec multiple times. To my non-fluent ear, I can't really tell that she's obviously British (although her French accent when speaking English does sound exaggerated) but as a language lover, it still bothers me that they couldn't find someone French. Juliette Binoche, for instance, would have been perfect, although I can imagine she's pretty hard to secure.
As an aside, I think accent use in general is an area the show could have improved on. Some characters sound exactly the way they should (Pete, Trudy, and Betty's upper-crust manner of speaking, for instance), but for people like Don and Peggy, who are supposed to occasionally slip into their respective accents, we *never* hear it! I would have loved it if Peggy had sounded like a real Brooklynite once or twice when drunk.
This is always what I think of too. And isn't Lane's wife also played by an American? I can't wrap my head around having a rule like that with so many British actors having proved their accent chops on US shows with American audiences, but then turning around having somebody speak French phonetically.
Embeth Davidtz (Rebecca Pryce) was born in the US to South African parents, who then relocated back to South Africa when she was a child.
I briefly checked a couple of interviews with her, and her regular speaking voice in those sounds South African. From what I have seen, she has convincing American and English accents. She was also very good in Schindler's List.
> What's really odd is that Matt Weiner refuses to cast non-Americans into American roles because he believes that their accents aren't convincing. And yet he chose to cast a non-native into a different nationality without giving the same consideration.
Which is also ironic considering Jessica Pare (Megan) is actually from Quebec and not a native English speaker lol. Her English is perfect but it goes to show Matt has a backward mindset.
Allophone means somebody who doesn't speak English or French. Look at her parents' last names. At best she's a native English speaker, but at the very least she's francophone for sure. As a matter of fact you can tell on the show that French is her first language.
Edit: Wikipedia confirms she speaks French and English. She's not allophone lol.
As an American I’ve been tolerating bad US accents by foreign actors for years without ever thinking to complain about it. It’s is a pedantic critique of Julia Ormond’s otherwise great performance.
“This is what happens when you have the artistic temperament but you're not an artist.”
I actually can’t stand this and it takes me out of what I’m watching. There are a few exceptions. Kate Winslet does a very good American accent. There are others, but 99% of the time I find it completely distracting. And often it would be totally fine for the character to not be American and it doesn’t matter so why is it necessary? Just have them speak how they speak!
This is certainly a take.
“Sure, she got hired to play a French character despite being completely incapable of chaining 3 French words together, and there were a million more qualified actresses the show runners could have chosen, but you’re just being pedantic. There have been instances of people playing American characters and doing a bad job at it, therefore your criticism is invalid.”
Nice whataboutism I guess
My boyfriend and I (both Québécois) just finished our rewatch 2 days ago and commented the exact same thing!
Marie is an interesting character but her accent breaks my immersion every time. Oftentimes we couldn't understand what she was saying if we weren't looking at the subtitles. Roger's accent was definitely better! Of course it's probably easier to practice a few words/sentences than your whole dialogue, which Julia Ormond had to do in both a second language and a fake accent in her primary language.
You would have heard a lot more New York accents during that period in real life than you do in the show. The stigma around r-dropping was only just starting to arise in 1960; most of the people in the show would have been born and learned to talk before World War II and, if they were from the city, would have sounded like New Yawkuhz. Peggy talking like a Californian despite supposedly being from a working class Brooklyn background was particularly grating.
There are so many characters whose accents are not in line with their background or era. Like you say, an overwhelming lack of NYC accents. You have Ginsberg who comes in with a bit of one but his character's also supposed to be outwardly "ethnic". I do like how they sort of lampshade the lack of accent with Dr. Miller. She clearly drops the hard NYC accent in certain situations. But with a character like Ken Cosgrove, I think he's supposed to be from Vermont and he has no discernible accent.
I can forgive Ken’s lack of a noticeable accent — I think they mention at some point he’s from the Burlington area, which even then was on the side of Vermont that had a pretty generic western New England/Northern sounding accent. You have to go further east to get the real New England-sounding accents.
The lack of New York accents is really noticeable though — most of the blue collar extras outside of the office and half of the secretaries would have had obvious accents during that time period. Even some of Don’s neighbors in Ossining would have been from the city but none of them sounded like it. That cop we hear yelling at Don off screen when he’s in the drunk tank stands out to me — it almost sounded like the actor was going for something but it sure as hell wasn’t a New York accent. At least the cop who arrests that GM exec for “tryin’ to fellate an undacover offica” in season 7 sounds the part.
I just don’t think they thought about it much, which is unfortunate in a show that put so much thought into so many of the other details.
And also, it's not really about accent. We can't really understand a word she's saying. It's like they would have cast a Croatian to play Pete Campbell
This makes me want to rewatch the scenes in Wisconsin as I might be able to tell if it is ‘authentic’ or not. The setting seemed a little too suburban to be the full-on midwest in the 60s/70s?…maybe the house should have been more modest.
I guess I don't care because I flunked in French class, and I just don't know any better. Honestly, that's probably going to be at least 90% of the audience too. Probably what they were counting on. I liked Marie better than Meghan actually, even though she was mean sometimes, it was usually done to be somewhat truthful (the world can't support that many ballerinas) or seemed humorous to me (when she was ripping on that idiot Herb married or when she spitefully took all Don's furniture). She was an intelligent woman and a free spirit. I was happy to see her and Roger get together.
Marie's French accent and inability to speak French took me out of the show every time she spoke. It distracted me a lot from her actual acting. She was like a caricature.
I feel you. I'm also a native speaker and the casting for Marie blows my mind in the wrong way. Makes no sense at all and it's honestly hard to keep being immersed into the show because of it. Such a huge mistake for a show high on historical and detail accuracy.
I don't speak French, so thankfully it's not an issue for me, but I 100% agree with you. It's baffling why they don't just cast somebody who speaks the language the character is going to speak. It's such an amateur move in what's supposed to be prestige television. I hear Breaking Bad too is especially egregious with this and Spanish.
I never realized that because I have no experience with the accent, but that's interesting to know, thank you. I'm American so I didn't notice, but you're right, they could have had and should have had an actress who sounded authentic.
I always thought her French accent sounded very good. It blew me away to find out she was the same actress from Legends of the Fall, totally did not recognize her
This is great info, it tickles me. But I feel like without, like, defending culturally-lacking casting, maybe... it was Marie's attitude that was French.
And yet...when she offers the Dr her Mother's Day flowers because she was done with them...A highpoint of a laugh...
Lol But Roger dancing and Singing Frere Jaques after sou bisou...had me rolling with laughter...lol Roger for the win...every time!
Does the show ever say where Marie grew up? Or Emile? It never says which university he teaches at in Montreal, but he does go to a conference in Regina so it’s likely McGill. I wonder how much time they actually spent in Montreal.
I could have sworn it was mentioned once or twice that Marie was born in France rather than Quebec, although maybe I’m remembering that wrong.
Either way it sounds like she got the accent wrong. (I don’t speak French but I’ll take the word of the other people who do and have commented here.)
Sure, but it was unlikely U de M would hire a communist in 1968 and UQAM was pretty small then. Sir George? Maybe. Which university do you think he taught at?
I think it was just as unlikely McGill would hire a Marxist/communist... They should've just made him French and say he taught at the Sorbonne. They clearly wanted to go for a Sartre/French-existentialist stereotype and it would've worked better like that.
McGill did fire “radical” professor Stanley Gray in 1969 for protesting but maybe there were other radical professors.
They really didn’t think it through, which is too bad there is so much attention to detail elsewhere in the show.
The Sopranos connection is historically accurate, there were very close links between the Montreal mafia and the Bonnanos. The murder in Donnie Brasco that they have to chop the bodies, which was unsolved at the time of the movie, turned out to be committed by Vito Rizzuto, who ended up being the boss of the Montreal mafia
Yes, that’s true. And the Bobby Bacala scene in Montreal was very good. I don’t know if Matthew Weiner was on the writing staff of the Sopranos when that was written.
I published three crime novels set in Montreal in the 70s and co-edited the anthology, Montreal Noir, for Akashic Books, there is plenty of material.
U.S. shows are continually butchering languages and accents but we only notice if it's a language close to the anglo-sphere. Nobody's noticing if they fuck up Mandarin. In other words, enough with the "this was a low point in the show for me" drama because it's happening constantly and you didn't care then.
I always felt like Roger’s French accent was like, I’m American and I’m doing my best. And since he owned that, it felt unpretentious and acceptable, vs. a really forced bad accent.
That's exactly it!
Except when he's doing his goofy accent on the phone with Don
Now imagine being Mexican and hearing basically any character speak Spanish. Breaking Bad being a huge offender. Only Lalo and Nachos dad in Better Call Saul speak actual Spanish
Just wanted to say this! It bothers me so much! Or Puerto Ricans are playing Mexicans wtf those accents are vastly different. I'm from Guatemala, but I can always tell. Or when actors have this neutral accent, it's so annoying! Lalo is so hot beside the point lol but he was born in Mexico, I believe. Nacho at least nails the first American generation who didn't learn fluent Spanish.
Wagner Moura, The actor who played Pablo Escobar in Narcos, played the character with a native Argentine accent. Much to the consternation of many.
I thought the story there was he was Brazilian and learned Spanish for the role.
This is correct. He was fluent in Portuguese and English before.
Never heard that tbh
I'm not even Colombian and you can clearly hear the difference.
His actual native language is Portuguese, he didn't even learn Spanish until he booked that role.
Very interesting, and I wouldn't have known! If Lalo and Nacho's dad are the best, who are some particularly bad cases in BB/BCS?
Marie’s accent is a serious low point for me in a series that otherwise paid keen attention to detail. I like Julia Ormond but I will never understand how her casting was approved for that particular role.
As another commenter mentioned, it's because only we care. They couldn't tell.
I could not tell at all, so I never noticed anything. I remember her mostly speaking English in the show. Her accent sounded a little fake to me, but not enough to bug me. Learning that it's egregiously bad now, I do care in some sense. But even so, I won't truly notice anything is off if I rewatch the show. This is an interesting gripe though. My college roommate was half South American, and he would get annoyed watching Breaking Bad because all the accents were wrong for the Spanish speaking characters. One prominent character is supposed to Chilean, but he said that my very white-person sounding spanish accent was better than his. He did not mean it as a compliment to either of us.
I’m Irish with only a so-so knowledge of French but I just find it incredible that the fact JO is from *the UK* didn’t tip them off that it might not be a wise decision.
Well you're Irish, so you know not to trust the British
Well said
This is how I feel as a Texan/American when Brits try their hand at a Southern accent. 
See also, every Australian accent put to screen.
I feel like Australian actors sometimes play up the accent for American shows, so we don't think they're British or something. The one Australian show that's been running for a thousand years and every Australian actor has been on it, the accents in that don't seem as Crocodile Dundee.
Ryan Kwanten’s accent as Jason Stackhouse in Trueblood was amazing. Being a Southerner myself / almost no one not from the South gets an authentic accent down - but he nailed it, especially for an Australian
The southern accent may be the easiest American accent for people from the UK and Ireland. They can never really hide some sounds with other locales.
Agree 💯. It was embarrassing listening to them as a French speaker. In a show that paid so much attention to detail, this felt like a rare slip. It's too bad because we Québécois are almost always misrepresented (The Revenant, anyone?) in American productions. I expected more from Mad Men.
At least Megan and her sister were played by actresses from Quebec. Their scenes together represented fairly well 60s Quebec I think (for as much as we got).
The fact that the Québécois were misrepresented so egregiously in The Revenant always bothered me because of how important it is to that story in particular to have gotten that right. With the historical significance and the impact on the growth of North America in general especially at that time period it would make you think they would have tried harder.
She does a really weird accent in Ladies in Black (five ish year old australian period movie) which kind of breaks suspension of disbelief. Otherwise shes such a great actor though
Well, to be fair, Roger’s better at most things.
What's ragina?
This is even funnier than that line: https://globalnews.ca/news/9574959/sexist-experience-regina-slogans-mayor-tourism-ceo-launch/
What started as a rebranded tourism department has turned into a controversial issue across Regina met with both hate and support online, and now in the halls of city council. Earlier this month, Tourism Regina officially changed its name to Experience Regina, with slogans like “Let’s make Regina sexy,” “The city that rhymes with fun” and “Show us your Regina.”
No sense of humor up north, huh?
Regina's more down south
Damn, I’m glad I don’t speak French! I do like this little tidbit that you French speakers threw in for us though thank you
>Emile's actor is Belgian Christ i thought he was played by Geoffrey Rush this entire time 
Oh my god! I never saw the resemblance but the Geoffrey Rush vibes are spot on!!
I thought Conrad Hilton was played by John Waters.
Also impeccable John Waters vibes, understandable.
My bilingual husband had the same issue, I think he also said Meghan speaks Parisian French not Québécois..?
She goes back and forth. When she's emotive, she falls back to Québécois.
Omg she totally goes back and forth! Her accent changed across episodes. It really took me out of it.
She's, sadly, not a good actress.
She could have done some schooling or lived with relatives in France and that tweaks the Quebecoisness of her accent.
Did she actually is Québécois and not French? Shouldn’t she always be speaking that dialect of French regardless of emotion or enunciation?
She's an Allophone. She is bilingual and fluent. She grew up in a Montreal neighborhood with a substantial English-speaking population. I presume that they spoke English at home (her father was a professor at McGill) and that she attended school on an English-language track.
Well not as much as you say, as the Québécois really stands out when she's angry
Québécois here: there is a 0% chance a Québécois family made up of all native French speakers would have spoken English at home.
I don't think that she (Jessica Pare the actress) is Quebecoise in the sense that French was her first language. I have heard her father speak and his accent is quite Anglophone. I don't know about her mother, but she has a French surname and is an interpreter. EDIT: This is a video of Anthony Pare, Jessica Pare's father. At this point, he had left McGill for a position at UBC. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wgGKYifFsU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wgGKYifFsU)
Isn’t this most likely a case of the showrunners not giving this much thought and you trying to make sense of it after the fact?
I am referring to the actress in real life.
“Allophone” refers to someone whose first language is neither English nor French. She’s a bilingual Francophone.
By that measure, I am under the impression that Jessica Pare is an Anglophone who speaks French.
I was talking about Megan. I’m not sure about Paré, but am under the impression that she’s also French Canadian.
Megan is supposed to be Quebecoise, who then takes elocution lessons in New York for her English. Although it is difficult to believe that parents from France living in Montreal during WWII would have named her Megan. (Apparently, Matt Weiner named the character after a friend of his, but that isn't a particularly compelling reason for doing it.)
It’s also bizarre that her sister (the daughter of two cosmopolitan socialists) would be the embodiment of pre-Révolution tranquille Québec. He was sloppy with the whole thing, IMO.
It's driven by the need for story conflict. With Emil vs Marie, he's a Marxist who secretly wishes that he was more successful, while his wife has had her self-confidence damaged by him and carries underlying resentments. With Marie-France, her character as a traditionalist supports her clashing with both her sister and her mother. The Emil-Marie conflict is realistic. Marie-France is a bit of a head scratcher for how she ended up that way, as she seems to have little in common with either parent. Then again, some children become the opposite of their parents out of protest, so it may be realistic enough.
> (her father was a professor at McGill) They don't say it in the series. He could've been at UdeM or UQAM (considering he was a Marxist...).
I am referring to the actress. In real life, Jessica Pare's father was a professor at McGill.
She's Québécoise. It's indeed weird as she doesn't really sound natural. She wants to sound French for Americans more than she wants to sound like an authentic Québécoise.
Interesting - my first exposure to that actress was actually through some early smaller Canadian films, so I assumed she'd be authentic sounding in her own realm!
I get your perspective, but I really enjoy Julia Ormond in the role. I’ve liked her ever since I saw her in Sabrina when I was 12.
Roger impersonating the ex husband
What's really odd is that Matt Weiner refuses to cast non-Americans into American roles because he believes that their accents aren't convincing. And yet he chose to cast a non-native into a different nationality without giving the same consideration. As a native speaker of American English who has traveled extensively, I find his position baffling. I can tell the difference between variations of English, and a lot of Brit and Aussie actors are able to nail the accent. (I presume that those who can't make their accents convincing aren't usually cast because they can be replaced by others who can.) Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg clearly know this, as they have filmed their war trilogy (Band of Brothers / The Pacific / Masters of the Air) with quite a few Brits and others who are playing Americans.
He cast the dude from The Nanny as an Englishman, and Nanny watchers always complained his accent sounded phony but praised the butler from Texas I always thought that was funny Charles Shauhnessy is an English actor and baron, aka the Right Honourable Lord Shaughnessy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Shaughnessy
> Nanny watchers
So Pete Campbell, basically
But Charles Shaughnessy is actually british and from London.
I know, that makes it so funny
> Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg clearly know this Why didn't he cast a real Krakozhian then?
I'm also a native American English speaker. I'm not a fluent French speaker, but I have taken several years of French class and have been to both France and Quebec multiple times. To my non-fluent ear, I can't really tell that she's obviously British (although her French accent when speaking English does sound exaggerated) but as a language lover, it still bothers me that they couldn't find someone French. Juliette Binoche, for instance, would have been perfect, although I can imagine she's pretty hard to secure. As an aside, I think accent use in general is an area the show could have improved on. Some characters sound exactly the way they should (Pete, Trudy, and Betty's upper-crust manner of speaking, for instance), but for people like Don and Peggy, who are supposed to occasionally slip into their respective accents, we *never* hear it! I would have loved it if Peggy had sounded like a real Brooklynite once or twice when drunk.
Oh, man. Juliette Binoche would have been sublime in that role.
This is always what I think of too. And isn't Lane's wife also played by an American? I can't wrap my head around having a rule like that with so many British actors having proved their accent chops on US shows with American audiences, but then turning around having somebody speak French phonetically.
Embeth Davidtz (Rebecca Pryce) was born in the US to South African parents, who then relocated back to South Africa when she was a child. I briefly checked a couple of interviews with her, and her regular speaking voice in those sounds South African. From what I have seen, she has convincing American and English accents. She was also very good in Schindler's List.
Thanks!
Nah, she played mcDreamy’s sister on Greys and had a horrid American accent.
> What's really odd is that Matt Weiner refuses to cast non-Americans into American roles because he believes that their accents aren't convincing. And yet he chose to cast a non-native into a different nationality without giving the same consideration. Which is also ironic considering Jessica Pare (Megan) is actually from Quebec and not a native English speaker lol. Her English is perfect but it goes to show Matt has a backward mindset.
Pare was raised as an Allophone.
Allophone means somebody who doesn't speak English or French. Look at her parents' last names. At best she's a native English speaker, but at the very least she's francophone for sure. As a matter of fact you can tell on the show that French is her first language. Edit: Wikipedia confirms she speaks French and English. She's not allophone lol.
That's because Roger is a cunning linguist
Is he also a master debator?
I have no experience being able to tell how close the accents are so I appreciate your insight!
Only a Fr**ch person would care about this.
Well, of course, as a non-French speaker wouldn't even know...
Can confirm; as a pathetic English-only speaking American, I had no idea her accent was bad until I saw comments from this sub.
Only 321 million people might have an issue with it
As an American I’ve been tolerating bad US accents by foreign actors for years without ever thinking to complain about it. It’s is a pedantic critique of Julia Ormond’s otherwise great performance. “This is what happens when you have the artistic temperament but you're not an artist.”
I actually can’t stand this and it takes me out of what I’m watching. There are a few exceptions. Kate Winslet does a very good American accent. There are others, but 99% of the time I find it completely distracting. And often it would be totally fine for the character to not be American and it doesn’t matter so why is it necessary? Just have them speak how they speak!
She's amazing when she speaks English
This is certainly a take. “Sure, she got hired to play a French character despite being completely incapable of chaining 3 French words together, and there were a million more qualified actresses the show runners could have chosen, but you’re just being pedantic. There have been instances of people playing American characters and doing a bad job at it, therefore your criticism is invalid.” Nice whataboutism I guess
My boyfriend and I (both Québécois) just finished our rewatch 2 days ago and commented the exact same thing! Marie is an interesting character but her accent breaks my immersion every time. Oftentimes we couldn't understand what she was saying if we weren't looking at the subtitles. Roger's accent was definitely better! Of course it's probably easier to practice a few words/sentences than your whole dialogue, which Julia Ormond had to do in both a second language and a fake accent in her primary language.
C'est triste parce qu'il y a tellement de bonnes actrices québécoises qui auraient été excellentes dans ce rôle.
Exactement ce que j'avais dit dans un autre post sur le sujet! Imagine Anne Dorval dans Mad Men comment ça aurait été extraordinaire.
Wow j'avais pas de nom en tête, mais Anne Dorval ça aurait été magique! Et tsé y auraient pu prendre une vraie bonne actrice pour Megan...
Ben oui, on a même déjà des actrices de la même génération qui ont joué dans des productions anglophones! Karine Vanasse et Évelyne Brochu!
Megan est Québécoise. En quoi elle est mauvaise ?
Jessica Paré n'est pas une bonne actrice
“All I got was suitcase!” The irony 🧳
I’ve seen several French speakers post similar issues… All I can say is that I’m glad I don’t speak French. lol. Nothing will ruin Marie for me.
It was shockingly bad. She absolutely ruined every scene she was in for me. I would be trying so hard to decipher whatever nonsense she was spouting.
Hate to break it to you but almost nearly every cast member who was supposed to have a regional American dialect did not have the correct one.
You would have heard a lot more New York accents during that period in real life than you do in the show. The stigma around r-dropping was only just starting to arise in 1960; most of the people in the show would have been born and learned to talk before World War II and, if they were from the city, would have sounded like New Yawkuhz. Peggy talking like a Californian despite supposedly being from a working class Brooklyn background was particularly grating.
There are so many characters whose accents are not in line with their background or era. Like you say, an overwhelming lack of NYC accents. You have Ginsberg who comes in with a bit of one but his character's also supposed to be outwardly "ethnic". I do like how they sort of lampshade the lack of accent with Dr. Miller. She clearly drops the hard NYC accent in certain situations. But with a character like Ken Cosgrove, I think he's supposed to be from Vermont and he has no discernible accent.
I can forgive Ken’s lack of a noticeable accent — I think they mention at some point he’s from the Burlington area, which even then was on the side of Vermont that had a pretty generic western New England/Northern sounding accent. You have to go further east to get the real New England-sounding accents. The lack of New York accents is really noticeable though — most of the blue collar extras outside of the office and half of the secretaries would have had obvious accents during that time period. Even some of Don’s neighbors in Ossining would have been from the city but none of them sounded like it. That cop we hear yelling at Don off screen when he’s in the drunk tank stands out to me — it almost sounded like the actor was going for something but it sure as hell wasn’t a New York accent. At least the cop who arrests that GM exec for “tryin’ to fellate an undacover offica” in season 7 sounds the part. I just don’t think they thought about it much, which is unfortunate in a show that put so much thought into so many of the other details.
And also, it's not really about accent. We can't really understand a word she's saying. It's like they would have cast a Croatian to play Pete Campbell
This makes me want to rewatch the scenes in Wisconsin as I might be able to tell if it is ‘authentic’ or not. The setting seemed a little too suburban to be the full-on midwest in the 60s/70s?…maybe the house should have been more modest.
Do you have examples? As a non native speaker, I would love to know
I guess I don't care because I flunked in French class, and I just don't know any better. Honestly, that's probably going to be at least 90% of the audience too. Probably what they were counting on. I liked Marie better than Meghan actually, even though she was mean sometimes, it was usually done to be somewhat truthful (the world can't support that many ballerinas) or seemed humorous to me (when she was ripping on that idiot Herb married or when she spitefully took all Don's furniture). She was an intelligent woman and a free spirit. I was happy to see her and Roger get together.
Marie's French accent and inability to speak French took me out of the show every time she spoke. It distracted me a lot from her actual acting. She was like a caricature.
Yes, it drove me nuts.
I feel you. I'm also a native speaker and the casting for Marie blows my mind in the wrong way. Makes no sense at all and it's honestly hard to keep being immersed into the show because of it. Such a huge mistake for a show high on historical and detail accuracy.
I don't speak French, so thankfully it's not an issue for me, but I 100% agree with you. It's baffling why they don't just cast somebody who speaks the language the character is going to speak. It's such an amateur move in what's supposed to be prestige television. I hear Breaking Bad too is especially egregious with this and Spanish.
I never realized that because I have no experience with the accent, but that's interesting to know, thank you. I'm American so I didn't notice, but you're right, they could have had and should have had an actress who sounded authentic.
Oui. Oh I’m sorry, you’re Quebecois. Wahhh.
Lmao mission accomplished, Matthew Weiner 👏
I always thought her French accent sounded very good. It blew me away to find out she was the same actress from Legends of the Fall, totally did not recognize her
This is great info, it tickles me. But I feel like without, like, defending culturally-lacking casting, maybe... it was Marie's attitude that was French.
Plot twist: Marie was born and raised in Hoboken and was falling out all along.
And yet...when she offers the Dr her Mother's Day flowers because she was done with them...A highpoint of a laugh... Lol But Roger dancing and Singing Frere Jaques after sou bisou...had me rolling with laughter...lol Roger for the win...every time!
French Canadian accents are closer to English than French (in the opinion of Parisians)
Well you know the saying: 75% of French people are very nice, and the other quarter lives in Paris
Does the show ever say where Marie grew up? Or Emile? It never says which university he teaches at in Montreal, but he does go to a conference in Regina so it’s likely McGill. I wonder how much time they actually spent in Montreal.
I could have sworn it was mentioned once or twice that Marie was born in France rather than Quebec, although maybe I’m remembering that wrong. Either way it sounds like she got the accent wrong. (I don’t speak French but I’ll take the word of the other people who do and have commented here.)
People at other universities that McGill go to conferences too.
Sure, but it was unlikely U de M would hire a communist in 1968 and UQAM was pretty small then. Sir George? Maybe. Which university do you think he taught at?
I think it was just as unlikely McGill would hire a Marxist/communist... They should've just made him French and say he taught at the Sorbonne. They clearly wanted to go for a Sartre/French-existentialist stereotype and it would've worked better like that.
McGill did fire “radical” professor Stanley Gray in 1969 for protesting but maybe there were other radical professors. They really didn’t think it through, which is too bad there is so much attention to detail elsewhere in the show.
I don't think they gave any thought to this.
I agree. And it’s too bad, there was a lot of good material to work with Montreal in the 60s.
Indeed
It is interesting that The Sopranos and Mad Men both had a Montreal connection.
The Sopranos connection is historically accurate, there were very close links between the Montreal mafia and the Bonnanos. The murder in Donnie Brasco that they have to chop the bodies, which was unsolved at the time of the movie, turned out to be committed by Vito Rizzuto, who ended up being the boss of the Montreal mafia
Yes, that’s true. And the Bobby Bacala scene in Montreal was very good. I don’t know if Matthew Weiner was on the writing staff of the Sopranos when that was written. I published three crime novels set in Montreal in the 70s and co-edited the anthology, Montreal Noir, for Akashic Books, there is plenty of material.
I'll look these up!
U.S. shows are continually butchering languages and accents but we only notice if it's a language close to the anglo-sphere. Nobody's noticing if they fuck up Mandarin. In other words, enough with the "this was a low point in the show for me" drama because it's happening constantly and you didn't care then.
Why would we notice if we don't understand the language? We speak French so we notice this.
Or, you know, Mandarin speakers could also call it out when it’s done in their language. This isn’t an either/or situation.