To be fair to Trainspotting and Big Fish pro Ewan McGregor, all we’ve heard of his French accent is about 3 seconds’ worth, in the trailer for the live-action remake of Beauty And The Beast. But yesterday, when that trailer hit the web, the Twitter reaction to his accent was almost a universal panning. Here are four examples:
After watching the Beauty and the Beast teaser countless times. I have to say...I really hate Ewan Mcgregor's "French" accent.
— Patrick Dougall (@patrickzfilms) May 24, 2016
Today I learned two things: 1. Disney is making a live action Beauty & The Beast. 2. Ewan McGregor has the worst French accent of all time.
— Sarah Shay (@TheSarahShay) May 23, 2016
i'm sorry ewan mcgregor, I love you with all of my heart, but your french accent in the Beauty and the beast trailer is dreadful
— Cam Scriven (@camscriven) May 23, 2016
*watches Beauty and the Beast trailer*
— Elizabeth May (@_ElizabethMay) May 23, 2016
Oh, this looks good, I like th--
*hears Ewan Mcgregor's French accent* pic.twitter.com/XYWNVW17UG
Check out Ewan’s six mega-French words here, at around the 55-second mark – he’s the guy saying “What if she is the one?”:
As much as I love him, even in this teaser I already can't stand Ewan McGregor's "French" accent. https://t.co/RTj64ke6jx
— Sebastian Nebel (@SebastianNebel) May 24, 2016
In case you don’t remember who he’s playing, here’s the original version of Lumiere:
ewan mcgregor as lumierepic.twitter.com/FwVd2rfcwD
— morticia (@tonyzstark) May 16, 2016
The thing about the accent is, he warned us about it a year ago, and it sounds like it’s the producers’ fault. “I’m married to a French woman more than 20 years and I thought ‘yeah I can do the French accent’,” he told Graham Norton in June 2015, “but I got there and I couldn’t. And it was so many people there…” He goes on to explain that they told him not to use the guttural French ‘r’, without which the accent ends up sounding a bit Mexican.
In another interview from last year, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, he said the same thing, only with more examples of the problem words (‘friend’ included).
But if you check out the original Lumiere’s accent here, (after his transformation into a human once more) it’s hardly the best...