Cillian Murphy on why the Irish accent is so difficult for non-Irish actors

He also chats about Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan in Wild Mountain Thyme.

Accents are tough. You don't have to look too far on the internet to find a list of great actors delivering bad accents in big movies, and that is because Accents Are Tough! And one of the toughest around is the Irish accent, which has brought down some amazing actors and actresses like Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, and loads more besides. JOE was lucky enough to chat to Cillian Murphy in the run-up to the release of his new movie A Quiet Place Part II, and among the many topics in discussion was that tricky Irish accent, and one of the more-recent, more-famous "failures" at attempting it. Since Cillian Murphy stars in A Quiet Place Part II with Emily Blunt, and he has previously worked with his good friend Jamie Dornan on WWII thriller Anthropoid, we had to ask about Wild Mountain Thyme. According to the production notes, it appears that Blunt left the set of AQP2 and came straight to Ireland to start working on the quirky rom-com. Colm Meaney previously weighed in on the topic of the now infamous movie, so of course we had to ask Cillian about it, too. He told us: "[Emily Blunt] is amazing at accents. I have not seen Wild Mountain Thyme, and Emily and Jamie are good pals of mine, so I'm not going to say anything about that movie that people haven't already said. I'm not going to add to anything. "But we did, we met up. I met up with Jamie and Emily when they were in Dublin. Or, they were in Ireland, and we met up in Dublin and hung out. But they're both brilliant." He also had thoughts on the accent itself, and why it has proven to be so difficult to so many great actors over the years: "Irish, man, it is the hardest. I think it is one of the hardest ones to do, it really is. I don't know why that is. Maybe because it is so variable, and because, maybe, because again, historically in America, there seems to be a version of the Irish accent that seems to have been accepted, that isn't accurate." A Quiet Place Part II will debut on the big screens here on Monday, 7 June. Clip via Paramount Pictures UK