Vera Farmiga addresses her Boston accent in ‘The Departed’
The actress said she has "a good ear for accents" and that she "had a dialogue coach and everything."
Vera Farmiga’s performance in “The Departed” is rarely, if ever, cited in discussions of actors who have successfully nailed a Boston accent on-screen. In his ranking specifically of the 2006 film’s accents, Andrew Gruttadaro of Complex placed Farmiga’s police psychiatrist Madolyn Madden second-to-last.
“What makes her accent so grating in The Departed is how fiercely she mispronounces her Rs while pronouncing everything else TOTALLY NORMAL,” Gruttadaro wrote. “It’s wildly jarring.”
In a new, wide-ranging interview with Vulture, Farmiga shifts the blame for her accent to those in charge of making the film, saying she was told that her accent needed to be “toned down.”
“I think I’ve got a good ear for accents, I had a dialogue coach and everything, and it ended up being [director] Marty [Scorsese] and the studio that toned down the accent!” Farmiga said. “It was more pronounced, more precise, and they wanted ‘influences’ of it, not necessarily like she was a born-and-raised gal. That was either the director or maybe a producer’s call.”
Would Farmiga’s accent have been improved if it were less “toned down”? Watch this clip and decide for yourself.
