Thor: Love And Thunder Gave Russell Crowe The Confidence To Do An Italian Accent In The Pope's Exorcist
Russell Crowe is on the brink of 60, and appears to be taking a let-'er-rip approach to acting. The three-time Academy Award nominee (and winner of one) is no longer being precious about his role choices. After hamming it up alongside RZA in the Wu-Tang Clan founder's unabashedly gory martial arts epic "The Man with the Iron Fists," Crowe eagerly sought out parts in genre flicks that were highly unlikely to bring him more Oscar glory. Though he hasn't completely cut prestige pictures out of his cinematic diet, his best performance of the last decade was as a Yoo-hoo-obsessed detective in Shane Black's brilliant buddy comedy "The Nice Guys."
Crowe threw an extra layer of glaze on the ham as the Greek god Zeus in Taika Waititi's "Thor: Love and Thunder." It's a disappointingly uneven MCU installment, but Crowe's thick, Zorba-like accent is a hoot. While Crowe's broadly comedic choice forced Waititi to shoot his scenes twice because he had no clue whether the accent would send the film hurtling into irredeemable zaniness, the master thespian's instincts proved true.
So when the screenplay for "The Pope's Exorcist" came Crowe's way, the star, emboldened by the enthusiastic reception for his portrayal of Zeus, insisted on going deep-dish Italian with his character, Father Gabriele Amorth.
Crowe, Italian style
In a career-spanning interview with Vanity Fair, Crowe revealed that the filmmakers were initially cool to their New Zealand-born star slathering meat sauce onto his depiction of Amorth. But Crowe's involvement was contingent on playing the formidable man-of-god his way. As he told VF:
"Having broken the ice with the Zeus thing and using the Greek accent [in Thor: Love and Thunder], here they are asking me to play an Italian priest. 'Okay, so what do you think he sounds like?' And the response initially was, 'We're thinking like just sort of a mid-atlantic, non-specific American accent.' And I'm like, 'You cannot get anyone more Italian than this guy. That doesn't interest me. I'm not going to do it that way.'"
There was precedent for the filmmakers' hesitance. Nick Nolte's Italian accent in George Miller's shattering "Lorenzo's Oil" takes a good half-hour of getting used to, while Nicolas Cage's turn as the title character in John Madden's "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" is a jarring, "It's-a-me, Mario" caricature. Crowe, however, was undaunted:
"I said, 'I'll do the role, but you've got to let me be Italian and you got to actually let me, give me a few scenes where I speak in an Italian language and then we'll come up with an idea of how he transitions from Italian language into English.' And they were brave enough to allow me to do it and so far the response from people has been pretty good, so we'll see what happens."
Julius Avery's film is an above-average horror programmer that never descends into camp. He trusts Crowe's natural charisma to buttress the material's out-there premise. The lesson here is to let Crowe be Crowe however he wants to be Crowe. Though if he really wants to impress me, he'll tackle a Harvard accent next.