Film

Nobody Can Get Over Robert Pattinson’s Hogwild Accent In This New Netflix Crime Thriller

He refused to work with a dialect coach -- and you can tell!

by Joseph Earp  19 September 2020
Robert Pattinson in the Devil All The Time

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What did we do to deserve Robert Pattinson?

We haven’t had such an enjoyable, unlikely and downright demented Hollywood leading man since, I dunno, Tommy Lee Jones in the ’90s? Jimmy Stewart in the ’50s? And even those comparisons don’t really work, because there is no way to distill the essence of Robert Pattinson; no way to make him seem as though he exists in the same universe as any human being you have ever met.

After all, has Jimmy Stewart ever tried to make spaghetti you can eat in your hand? I don’t think so.

But it’s not just his offscreen antics that make Pattinson so compelling. He is just as fascinating when he pops up onscreen, no matter what the role.

Need proof? How about his turn in new Netflix true crime thriller The Devil All The Time?

In the film, Pattinson plays a deranged preacher who gets up to all kinds of icky behaviour. He’s meant to be from the Deep South, too, but you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell that from the accent. Indeed, reports indicate Pattinson refused to meet with a dialect coach, or show anyone his accent until the day before shooting started.

Which is why it sounds like this:

Pattinson stans will probably recall that this is not the first time that the star has done a demented accent in a Netflix original. The one-time Twilight star also pops up at the end of Timothee Chalamet’s The King, garbling French like each word is a marble he’s swishing around his mouth.

But hey, isn’t that the fun of the man? Most of Twitter seems to think so.

I’m going to ask one more time: what did we do deserve this man?