DAISY’S ROOTS
STAR SAYS HAVING SCOTTISH DAD HELPS WITH ACCENTS My mum is from Ireland and my dad is Scottish, so I grew up in a house full of different accents Actress on family, dialects and new movie
Daisy Edgar-Jones perfected the Irish lilt in BBC smash hit Normal People and a Deep South twang in new movie Where The Crawdads Sing.
But Geordie and Welsh accents are a little too much for the actress, whose dad is Scottish, to master.
The 24-year-old, who plays Kya in the hugely anticipated film based on the bestselling book of the same name, joked that she’s not sure she “could do a Geordie accent and Welsh would be tough”. But Da i sy wou ld “happily give it a go”.
She said: “I do love accents. My mum is from Ireland and my dad is Scottish so I grew up in a house full of different accents. Maybe that helps, I don’t know, but I do seem to play a lot of characters with very different accents to mine.
“This one I real ly enjoyed, actual ly, because the North Carolina accent is so strong. You can really hear it. The more neutral accents I find much harder.”
Daisy, whose dad Philip is head of entertainment at Sky and mum Wendy is a former film editor, had an accent coach to help her capture Kya.
The actress, who rose to fame as Marianne in the acclaimed TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, said: “I did a lot of work to get the accent right. It was important for Kya to sound like she was raised in North Carolina and not London, like me.”
Where The Crawdads Sing, out in the UK this week, tells the story of Kya, who raised herself in the marshes of North Carolina and becomes a suspect in the murder of a man she was once involved with. It was produced by Reese Witherspoon.
Daisy said: “She was on set a lot and really hands-on with everything. It was an honour to work with her.” But f ilming in the bayous of southern Amer ica didn’t just involve close encou nt e r s w i t h Hollywood royalty, Daisy also got up close and personal with cockroaches and alligators. She said: “[A cockroach] fell out of my clothes when I was taking them out of the tumble dryer. And then I stood on another one in the shower, which really freaked me out.
“But the wildlife was unbelievable. One day I got to kayak through the bayou. It was amazing. We came back at night and you could see the orange glow from all these eyes of the alligators. Thankfully it was from a distance!”
Daisy was already a big fan of Delia Owens’ coming- of-age novel before she even landed the coveted role.
She added: “I first read it when I was still auditioning. I loved Kya as a character. The theme of isolation really stuck with me. So being able to escape into Kya’s world and see how she finds comfort, solace and love through the connections she makes with the natural world was so moving. I feel really lucky that I was given this chance to play her.”