{"id":242227,"date":"2025-10-26T15:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/242227\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T15:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T15:00:10","slug":"this-harry-potter-actor-accidentally-gave-his-character-an-australian-accent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/242227\/","title":{"rendered":"This Harry Potter Actor Accidentally Gave His Character An Australian Accent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re a professional actor, you&#8217;ve probably had a few bad auditions in your life \u2014 and whether or not you book the part, a bad audition is flat-out embarrassing. For example, Domhnall Gleeson, who&#8217;s currently starring in the Peacock original series &#8220;The Paper,&#8221; is apparently still haunted by his audition for the &#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; film franchise, in which he briefly plays Bill Weasley.<\/p>\n<p>During an appearance on &#8220;Late Night with Seth Meyers&#8221; (via <a href=\"https:\/\/ew.com\/domhnall-gleeson-recalls-flubbing-english-accent-first-day-on-harry-potter-set-one-of-the-worst-days-of-my-life-11802416\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Entertainment Weekly<\/a>), Gleeson \u2014 who is Irish and also happens to be the son of Brendan Gleeson, a celebrated Irish actor who\u00a0also showed up in the &#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; movies as Alastor &#8220;Mad-Eye&#8221; Moody \u2014 said he went in to audition for Bill prepared to do a traditional British accent, but went in a &#8230; weirdly Southern direction.\u00a0&#8220;My first day on that set, I was meant to be doing an English accent,&#8221; Gleeson told Meyers. &#8220;They&#8217;d all been doing it \u2014 I was in the seventh and eighth movies, only a small part. And &#8230; I went Australian. And I couldn&#8217;t stop.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As Gleeson tells it, he picked an Aussie accent, for\u00a0whatever reason, and ultimately, director David Yates stepped in.\u00a0&#8220;I went Australian on the first take and there was like 300 people on set and the director was there like, &#8216;Cut!&#8217; And this weird, long pause,&#8221; Gleeson continued. &#8220;And then the director [Yates] came over and he was like, &#8216;So, you&#8217;ve gone Australian.'&#8221; Apparently, Yates was\u00a0far from the only person who noticed Gleeson&#8217;s Australian twang. As Gleeson recalled:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Everyone knows he&#8217;s gone Australian. And I was like [adopts an Australian accent], &#8216;No, I know.&#8217; And he was like, &#8216;Is there anything you can do about it?&#8217; &#8216;Not really mate. I think this is what we&#8217;re doing.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p id=\"mntl-sc-block_12-0\">&#8220;It was shocking,&#8221;\u00a0Gleeson concluded. &#8220;It was one of the worst days of my life. And then things got a little bit better. And so I hope my American accent [on &#8216;The Paper&#8217;] is better, but you tell me!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p id=\"mntl-sc-block_22-0\">Meyers, of course, riffed on the whole situation, saying that when you&#8217;re auditioning for an adaptation of a very famous book, you can&#8217;t exactly &#8220;have your agent call in and be like, &#8216;Could it be Australian?'&#8221; Gleeson was game.\u00a0&#8220;Well, I was also playing one of the Weasley brothers, so he&#8217;s got bright red hair,&#8221; Gleeson joked. &#8220;If he&#8217;s Australian, Mrs. Weasley [played by Julie Walters] has been doing some[thing], you know what I mean? Something&#8217;s been up.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you&#8217;re a professional actor, you&#8217;ve probably had a few bad auditions in your life \u2014 and whether&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-242227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}