Barry Keoghan's 'abysmal' Peaky Blinders accent has been explained
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man has so many aspects of it that fans are loving, most notably the final story of Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby.
The sequel film, following on from the beloved six season BBC TV show, brings back Murphy as Tommy alongside Sophie Rundle as Ada. Amongst the newer cast members however Barry Keoghan is the only to play an existing character, taking on the role of Duke Shelby introduced in the final season of the show.
The film has been widely praised, sitting at 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with Barry Keoghan’s performance as Duke receiving particular plaudits.
The Times called Keoghan and Murphy a ‘top-tier acting duo’, praising their performances, but there is one aspect of Keoghan’s performance that fans are less pleased about: his accent.
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Despite the criticism though an expert has explained not only why his Birmingham accent doesn’t sound quite right, but also why it’s one of the hardest accents to master.
One fan on Reddit slammed his performance, saying: “Barry’s a decent actor, but for some reason he really stuck out like a sore thumb in this film.
“His accent was abysmal and maybe that was throwing him off? Whatever it was, I found myself cringing when watching many of his scenes.”
Speaking exclusively to LADbible however, Actors Accent Coach Sarah Valentine pointed out a specific aspect of his accent. She said that watching a clip from the film the ‘prosody’ of his accent stood out to her.
This is essentially musical pattern of how someone speaks, with each accent having its own rhythm and melody.
She added: “In the clip I watched, there are moments where you can hear very slight Irish lilts or tonal patterns coming through in the rhythm of the speech.
“That’s completely understandable given that Barry Keoghan is Irish and originally from Dublin. These tonal patterns can sometimes sit underneath the words even when an actor has learned the vowel sounds correctly.”
In essence, though Barry Keoghan may be pronouncing all the words as someone from Birmingham would, the underlying pattern of his Irish accent comes through and throws off the viewer.
Ultimately though Sarah pointed out that a Birmingham accent is amongst the most difficult for an actor to master.
She explained: “The Birmingham accent is actually one of the trickier British accents for actors to learn because it relies heavily on rhythm and tone rather than just obvious sound changes.
“The vowel placement, the pacing of speech and the musicality all need to line up for the accent to feel authentic. If those elements shift slightly, the accent can start to drift into something else.”
The expert finally added: “Another thing to remember is that this film is set in a period context, and historically accents were far less standardised than they are today.
“When we look back at characters from that time period, the reality is that accents would likely have been far more mixed and fluid than modern audiences sometimes expect.”
This was also acknowledged in the past by Steven Knight, who himself said the accent was ‘very difficult to get right’.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is available to watch in cinemas now, and will be available to watch on Netflix 20 March.
Topics: Peaky Blinders, Barry Keoghan, Cillian Murphy, Netflix, TV and Film, Film, TV
Michael Slavin