Sam Neill recently told Vanity Fair that he’s received a lot of criticism over the years for his shaky accent on Jurassic Park, in which he plays paleontologist Alan Grant, with an accent that’s sometimes American and sometimes faintly New Zealand. Neill blamed none other than Jurassic Park director Steven Spielberg for the mix-up. Neill spent a month preparing for filming by perfecting an American accent that Spielberg told him to get rid of one of the first days on set.
“He came up to me in the middle of the day and said, ‘Hey Sam, do you know that accent we were talking about?’ I said, “Yeah, I’ve been working on this for four weeks…” He said, “Don’t worry, just use your own voice,” Neill said. “I said, ‘That’s great Steven, thank you.’ And then, four days later, he came up to me and said, ‘Do you know that voice you’re using now?’ I said, “Yes, my voice?” He said, ‘Somewhere in between.’”
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“It’s an actor’s nightmare!” Neill added. “That’s why I get a lot of criticism to this day: Sam Neill’s American accent in ‘Jurassic Park’ was a lot of T. rex poop.”
Neill’s Jurassic Park co-star Laura Dern joined him for the Vanity Fair interview and added, “You give the fans everything they want. A little bit of you, a little bit American.”
After skipping Spielberg’s 1997 sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Neill returned to the franchise for the Joe Johnston-directed entry Jurassic Park III in 2001. Both Neill and Dern join original co-star Jeff Goldblum in the upcoming Jurassic World Dominion, marking their first reunion in the franchise since Spielberg’s 1993 original.
“I don’t think anyone really understood what we were trying to do,” Dern said of filming the first film. “Only Steven Spielberg did a movie, and it might have something to do with dinosaurs. I remember when we got our first script for Jurassic Park it was on red paper. Do you remember that? You couldn’t copy it. So old school.”
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Jurassic World Dominion hits theaters June 10th at Universal Pictures.
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