Daniel Craig Spent Months Relearning His Knives Out Accent For Glass Onion

One of the best parts about watching a British actor in an American movie is listening to them attempt (with varying success) to sound like any other American. Most of the time you get an actor who's reasonably convincing; there are little slip-ups you'll notice if you're on the lookout for it, but usually nothing crazy enough to break immersion. Typically the actor is trying to pass as a regular, "accent-neutral" American, sounding like they're from Anytown, USA. And then there are actors like Daniel Craig in "Knives Out."

In the same vein as plenty of other eccentric detective characters, Benoit Blanc is a man who immediately distinguishes himself from the rest of the cast with a thick southern accent none of the other characters share. Just as Agatha Christie's Poirot has a heavy French accent, Daniel Craig's Blanc has what one of the characters describe as a "Kentucky-fried Foghorn Leghorn drawl." It's an accent thick enough that we'd recommend subtitles when watching the film. 

It's also an accent that Craig forgot how to do for the upcoming sequel "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," dropping on Netflix on December 23, 2022. In fact, Craig had to return to an acting coach for "three or four months" before they started shooting. "I'd forgotten the accent and I didn't want to do a pastiche," Craig explained. "I wanted to make it as grounded and as anchored in reality as possible."

As a result, we may find Benoit Blanc's accent to be a little different in the sequel. It might seem weird, but "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" is also going for a different tone from the original. Much like the Agatha Christie novels that "Knives Out" was inspired by, each movie in the series is expected to take place in a new location with new characters, taking on a new subset of the mystery genre. Director and writer Rian Johnson has confirmed that the plan for the franchise is that "every film" will "be like a whole new book, with its own tone, ambition, reason for being."

"Glass Onion" is based around Blanc getting invited to a tech billionaire's private island in Greece, where presumably another person will end up dead, leaving Benoit will have to crack the case. The plot will likely be different in tone and structure from the original, but we at least know we'll still get to see the lovable Detective Blanc interact with yet another group of eccentric rich people. 

We still don't know much about the movie's plot yet, but we know it will be just as star-studded as the original. Edward Norton, Jessica Henwick, Janelle Monae, Leslie Odom, Kate Hudson, and many more will all be playing potential murderers interacting with Detective Blanc. How deep will this new doughnut hole go? We'll just have to wait and see.