Nailing a regional accent is one of the trickier asks in acting, and for Netflix’s new creature feature Below, Josh Hartnett took the challenge seriously. To play Newfoundland fisherman Calvin Penney, the actor immersed himself in the sound and rhythm of the region long before cameras rolled.
Hartnett listened to The Fisheries Broadcast every day while developing the accent, using the program to pick up on regional differences. He supplemented that by spending time with people from across Newfoundland.
The next challenge was making the Penney family sound like they came from the same place. Hartnett and his castmates worked with a dialect coach from Newfoundland to settle on a shared local sound, then kept practicing it.
He knew some viewers might struggle to understand the accent or criticize it online, but he was willing to risk that response. Authenticity, he said, mattered to both the cast and the Newfoundland crew: “So it was super important to us and very important for the crew in Newfoundland that we got that right, as unusual as it sounds to the average TV watching ear around the world.”
Below follows a fishing community in Snook’s Arm threatened by a mysterious sea creature. Hartnett’s Calvin joins forces with a marine biologist played by Mackenzie Davis to protect his family and community. All 6 episodes arrived on Netflix on October 8.
