Wild Mountain Thyme director defends ‘awful’ Irish accents in Jamie Dornan romance

‘You have to make the accent more accessible to a global audience,’ says John Patrick Shanley

The director of Wild Mountain Thyme, John Patrick Shanley, has defended the Irish accents in the film after they were deemed “awful” and a “hate crime” on social media.

Earlier this month, the first trailer for the Irish romance starring Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt was released, and every single accent was mocked mercilessly on Twitter.  

In the film, described as a “moving and wildly romantic tale”, English star Blunt plays a headstrong farmer called Rosemary Muldoon, who has her heart set on marrying her neighbour Anthony Reilly (played by Dornan, who is actually Northern Irish).

“Jesus wept!” wrote one viewer. “How does Jamie Dornan, the only Irish person in the trailer manage to have the worst Irish accent of all of them?”

The official Twitter account of the Leprechaun Museum added: “Even we think this is a bit much.”

In a new interview with Variety, Shanley revealed that both Dornan and Blunt worked with the dialect coach Brendan Gunn, listening to tapes of people from western Ireland.  

He explained that Dornan, who grew up in Belfast, wanted to sound less metropolitan, which is why he doesn’t speak in his normal voice. “You have to make the accent more accessible to a global audience,” Shanley said, in response to the criticism.

Dornan added that the movie “is like an injection of joy into the veins”.

Wild Mountain Thyme will be available on demand on 11 December.