Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc accent has some company: Robert Pattinson has added to the tradition of British actors doing interesting takes on American southern accents in Antonio Campos’s new movie, The Devil All the Time. Obviously, Pattinson had to put his own maniacal spin on it.
The director of the film, which is out now on Netflix, told Insider that Pattinson had refused to work with a dialect coach as 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.â€Â In fact, Campos had no idea what Pattinson’s accent would sound like. When asked, Pattinson “would be like, ‘I’m going to do this thing and that thing, with a little bit of this,’†talking in circles. It’s surprising he didn’t go for a bold-faced lie, as when he told the Today show he had witnessed a clown’s death at the circus as a child. (“I actually made the whole thing up,†he later said. “It’s coming back to haunt me.â€) Finally, on the first day of shooting, he revealed the high-pitched but soft voice, completely distinct from the Pattinson of Tenet and the soon-to-be Pattinson of The Batman. But Campos kept the faith. “There was no way in my mind that he wasn’t going to come on set with something bad,†he said. “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.â€
For Batman, his “something interesting†is coronavirus antibodies. The actor was reportedly sent home from production earlier this month after testing positive for COVID-19. Don’t worry — both the movie and Pattinson are back in action, with THR reporting that production has resumed and paparazzi snapping the actor’s PDA with girlfriend Suki Waterhouse. We get it; isolation sucks.