Pierce Brosnan is standing up for his Irish roots.
The 72-year-old actor responded to the criticism of the Irish accent he uses in his Paramount+ crime drama series “MobLand.”
“My own accent is very soft,” Brosnan said in a new interview with The Radio Times. “Conrad’s accent is a million miles away from me.”
Brosnan, who grew up in Ireland, explained that he worked with a dialect coach to come up with the accent for the show.
“I told him that I needed a Kerry accent,” he shared. “So he gave me the name of a man and I Googled the guy and that was it. It was a Kerry accent. And so, I just gave it full tilt.”
Brosnan stars in “MobLand” as London crime family patriarch Conrad Harrigan. The cast also includes Tom Hardy, Paddy Considine, Helen Mirren, Joanne Froggatt, Lara Pulver, Anson Boon, Jasmine Jobson and more.
Since the series premiered in March, viewers have brutally roasted Brosnan for his Irish accent.
“How can Irish man Pierce Brosnan have such an appallingly bad Irish accent in Mobland??” one fan wrote on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month.
‘Pierce Brosnan can’t do an Irish accent, they should get a proper Irish actor in the role,” another fan said.
A third person tweeted: “Pierce Brosnan’s accent almost makes MobLand unwatchable. Surely they made him do that? And why? The bloke is Irish for f–k sake!”
“Watching the first episode of Mobland. Very Good. Pierce Brosnan accent is horrific,” someone else wrote.
Even critics ripped into Brosnan’s on-screen accent in their reviews of the show.
The Independent’s Helen Coffey wrote, “There’s Brosnan’s preposterous ‘Irish’ brogue for starters – even more inexplicable when you consider that the man actually is Irish — an amalgamation of every terrible ‘top o’ the mornin’ to ya!’ impression you’ve ever heard.”
Ed Power for The Irish Times called Brosnan’s accent “a horror for the ages.” He also criticized Mirren’s accent “that makes Tom Cruise in Far and Away sound like Colm Meaney swearing up a streak.”
In his Radio Times interview, Brosnan explained why he was hesitant to take on the “MobLand” role.
“Every job is a challenge and it all comes with a thump of anxiety, because you have to do something,” he said. “What are you doing on the stage? Why are you there? So that’s constant. You live with that. You live with that stress all the time, and that’s what’s so exhilarating. That’s what makes you alive.”
The James Bond actor previously told GQ that his character in the streaming series has a lot of complexities.
“He’s a mangled man who has charisma, but he’s someone who is dangerously on the edge,” said Brosnan. “And he’s aligned with a wife who is equally outrageous, and they’ve managed to live a very good life in this kind of rather dangerous underworld.”
The Season 1 finale of “MobLand” comes out Sunday, June 1 on Paramount+.
