Daniel Radcliffe talks being forced to ditch Canadian accent for “What If”

Daniel Radcliffe has spoken in a new interview for S magazine of how he was forced to ditch his Canadian accent for his 2014 film What If.

The actor, who now resides in New York, revealed that the film producers told him to drop his Canadian accent for the film just a few days before filming. He said,

It was basically, ‘You’re not marketable without your English accent,’ which is bad news for all [of]  the other stuff I’ve done with American accents.

It was one of those ridiculous last-minute panics on their behalf, but I certainly wasn’t going to go, ‘Well, screw you guys, I’m going to put 200 people out of work for the sake of an accent’

He also spoke of how he tends to pick roles in the interview.

With actors, the only time we talk about one genre versus another is when we’re promoting a film and discussing it with journalists.

It certainly doesn’t factor in my thought process when I’m picking a role. You’re not thinking, ‘I want to do a romantic comedy, so only show me romcoms from now on.’ You’re just looking for a good script, and when ‘What If’ came along, I’d already read a few romcoms, and it just stood out to me. I wanted to be part of it.

Radcliffe was also asked if he would ever consider doing an action movie.

But there’s never a fresh character involved in any of those films. It’s just the same people thrown into different cities with different casts. I like action movies, and I feel there used to be lots of really witty ones, like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon and the Bourne movies, but the good ones are few and far between now.

Surprisingly, Radcliffe was even pitched a remake of The Wizard of Oz with Emma Watson in the role of Dorothy and Rupert Grint as the Scarecrow. He said,

The guy pitching was obviously the laziest person in the world!

What do you make of Radcliffe’s American accent? Do you think the producers were right to make him use his British accent? Let us know in the comments.