British Star Sonya Cassidy Breaks Down Her Boston Accent Transformation for ‘Reacher’
In Season 3 of Reacher, not only are we reacquainted with our favorite off-the-grid ex-military cop, we also meet a brand new cast of characters who are joining the mix. From beefy bodyguards to potential flirtations and more, these new faces are bringing a brand new energy to the Amazon Prime show. Popviewers caught up with some of the newest cast members to ask about how they were adjusting to their new home.
British actress Sonya Cassidy (The Man Who Fell From Earth), plays DEA agent Susan Duffy. Sharp, witty, and extremely From Boston, Cassidy’s character sounds a world away from her-life voice. So how did she prepare for that extreme accent shift?
She said that her process started with listening.
“For the audition, I just watched lots of films set in Boston,” Cassidy told PopViewers. “I found some great clips on YouTube from the Boston Globe, when Whitey Bulger was caught and these Boston longshoremen talking about working at the docks and all this stuff.”
Cassidy described these clips as “a sort of soundtrack to my life while i was filming, crediting this research alongside a dialect coach to “make it more nuanced.”
To her, accents are a challenge that she enjoys to take on in a role.
“They are so much more than just sounds. They tell you about a character’s personality, how they think, where they’re from,” she said. “None of Duffy’s lines would sound right in my accent. It just doesn’t fly.”
Cassidy says that she is aware that the accent is strong.
“I think now the Bostonites, I don’t know in South Boston, how many people really fucking sound like this,” she said. “I think it’s maybe moved out to Worcester, so I heard in my research. But for Duffy, they wanted that kind of lovely, Boston, brawler broad.”
Another new member of the cast is Olivier Ritchers (The King’s Man). Known as The Dutch Giant, Ritcher is 7 foot 2, and holds the Guinness World Record for being the Tallest Professional Bodybuilder.
Ritchers plays Paulie, a bodyguard who is not afraid to fight our leading man. And while his job on set was to be an adversary, Ritchers described the cast as being close. “We joined the family,” he said. “They took us in like their children.”
This is Ritchers first big foray into television, having mainly played roles in film before.
“I got to talk and give my opinion a lot more than I’m used to,” he said, describing how he found that this set was open to collaboration. “I spoke to the director, and he said, ‘Olivier, we are only going to stop filming you if we are happy.’”
Newcomer Brian Tee (Chicago Med) plays Former Military Intelligence Quinn. The actor echoed Richter’ s sentiments about this openness on set.
“Having a loose set allows the freedom for us to act and respond and be responsive to everything that’s happening. And you want that freedom. You want that sense of openness, as far as an artist is concerned, so you can live and breathe the character and really elevate the craft.”
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