With the cast of "Black Mass" being praised for their performances in bringing the tale of brutal Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger to life it has now been revealed what it took for them to achieve their spot-on-Boston inflections.
Much of the credit is due to the dialect coaches of the movie Howard Samuelsohn and Carla Meyer who consciously molded the voices of "Mortdecai" actor Johnny Depp and the cast throughout the production of the film, according to Boston.
During an interview with Samuelsohn he revealed the key to getting the Boston accent down is to not think about it too much but to get into the rhythm of it and "just do it."
The voice coach told the publication once the sounds have been worked on the technicalities are there after forgotten adding that the most important fact is that the actors forget about it during a scene and the dialect coaches merely remind the actors of a few tips here and there.
Samuelsohn said for actors the important element is to be able to comfortably get into character and not worry too much about the accent, adding "their performance is more important than the accent."
Meyer worked with the cast three weeks prior to filming then spent additional weeks at the beginning of shooting before Samuelsohn continued the sessions. Through carefully structured drills the actors had to hone their skills to pick up phonetic sounds while carefully going through the lines in the script.
While the cast spent time locking down their accents lead star of the film Johnny Depp had to focus on getting into character to play Bulger who turned down the "Pirates Of The Caribbean" actor's offer to meet.
Fortunately, for Depp the actor was able to take a look at surveillance footage that helped master Bulger's movements, according to USA Today.