There are some great references to Butcher’s British origins in “The Boys,” like his amazing “Spice Girls speech” in season 1, but the cockney accent is what really sells it. So in order to create the perfect dialect, he called in one of the best coaches in the business:
“It’s kind of the perfect storm because you have a British character, played by a New Zealand actor, written by American writers and in the first season I had a Canadian dialect coach. At the end of the first season I identified that there was certain elements of authenticity that could be improved, so I brought in Andrew Jack, who was one of the foremost, world-class dialogue coaches. I had first worked with him 20 years ago on ‘Lord of the Rings.’ He came in and we significantly improved the specificity of the dialect and he was able to contribute more colloquialisms to give that character more authenticity and I was super excited about where we were going to go, but really tragically he was one of the first victims of the pandemic, he was working on ‘The Batman’ and he passed.”
Jack was one of the greatest dialect coaches around, with credits that included everything from “The Last of the Mohicans” to Marvel movies, and his contributions to Urban’s cockney accent didn’t go unnoticed. It’s a great performance made even better with dialect details, and we all have Jack to thank.
