Jennifer Lawrence is one of the best actresses of her generation. She is not, however, great at doing a Russian accent.
According to dialect coach Erik Singer, Lawrence’s accent in Red Sparrow was OK—but it could’ve been much better. "The back of her tongue is very loose and soft," he says in his latest Technique Critique video. "And the front of her tongue is a little bunched and kind of doing the work. I think if she’d flipped that equation so that the back of the tongue was bunched and stiff and sort of anchored and the front of tongue was spread out … I think she would’ve had a foundational logic that would’ve stitched the sounds together and made it more organic and flowing."(Alison Brie’s joke-y Russian inflections in GLOW, however, are great.)
Who else has the goods? Sam Rockwell does a fine job with the Ozarks accent in Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri; Jeff Bridges gets Texas right in Hell or High Water; and Andrew Lincoln’s Kentucky inflections are “fantastic” in The Walking Dead.
Check out the video above to get Singer’s take on further performances from Dev Patel (Lion), Giancarlo Esposito (Better Call Saul), Lucas Hedges (Manchester By the Sea), and more.