Pierce Brosnan hits back at criticism of Irish accent in Mobland

Sunday World

27-05-2025

The Drogheda-born and Navan-raised star plays the lead role in director Guy Ritchie's Paramount+ series
Pierce Brosnan has responded to criticism of his Irish accent in TV series MobLand after it was described as 'all over the place'.
The Drogheda-born and Navan-raised star plays the lead role in director Guy Ritchie's Paramount+ series.
The contemporary crime drama is based around the fictional Harrigan family and their influence on London's criminal underworld.
It features Brosnan (72) and Dame Helen Mirren, 46 years after they both starred in John Mackenzie's iconic 1979 gangster film The Long Good Friday.
But the veteran screen stars have found themselves taking heat over their Irish accents in the new show, with Brosnan's in particular coming under fire.
In their review of the show, The Irish Independent dismissed it as 'all over the place and a huge distraction', but the actor argued that his role as family patriarch Conrad Harrigan demanded a broader Irish accent than his own.
'My own accent is very soft,' he says in the latest issue of Radio Times. 'Conrad's accent is a million miles away from me.'
He went on to explain that the inspiration for the accent was a man suggested by his dialect coach, adding: "I told him that I needed a Kerry accent, so he gave me the name of a man and I googled the guy and that was it.
Pierce Brosnan
News in 90 Seconds - May 27th
"It was a Kerry accent and so I just gave it full tilt."
The "brutish, cunning, charming and dangerous' Conrad is the flipside of the suave and sophisticated secret agent James Bond who Brosnan depicted across four blockbuster films from 1995 to 2002.
Saying he enjoys playing the villain, Brosnan added: 'like him. I love him. I enjoy him. I mean, I don't want to be that person – he's a psychopath.
'Yes, there are no holds barred. You own the stage, you have wings to fly and be anything you wish.'
Brosnan is working with celebrated director Ritchie for the first time in Mobland, who had made his mark from Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels to big-budget Hollywood reinterpretations of Sherlock Holmes.
'I have great admiration for Guy Ritchie's work and the style that he has created for himself,' Brosnan said.
'The landscape of film-making that he has embroidered over the years is wildly entertaining.'
Referring to the Harrigans, he said the family is 'mangled and warped, twisted, incestuous and dangerous'.
Brosnan who was 25-years old when he made his screen debut as an unnamed IRA assassin in The Long Good Friday, is reuniting with Mirren - who also stars alongside him in forthcoming film The Thursday Murder Club
'It still holds up as a British gangster movie,' Brosnan said of the iconic flick.
'And now, all these years later, Helen and I are working together again.'
In the interview, Brosnan also spoke of the worry and excitement he faces when taking on new roles, saying: "Every job is a challenge and it all comes with a thump of anxiety, because you have to do something.
"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."
Brosnan will appear in a film adaptation of Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club book, which is set for release in August.