Over the years, we’ve had to witness a few painful renditions of actors trying to perfect the South African accent. Remember Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond?
Here’s a little snippet to refresh your memory:
Matt Damon in Invictus is highly debatable as some South Africans are still raving about the 2009 film years later.
But the great part about South Africa is that we are diverse and each accent is different from the next – so the question remains, will anyone ever be able to perfect it?
Well, fans of the 2019 movie The Hustle, currently streaming on Netflix, beg to differ. Rebel Wilson, who plays Penny Rust, a small-time con artist who traps men into giving her money struts her stuff by showcasing what Netflix calls an ‘Afrikaans Accent’ and locals are loving it!
One social media user said “Great accent! Sounds genuine. She had me at howzit”.
Another said “She even did it better then me and I am Afrikaans.”
Here are a few more reactions:
“That “shame” was on point”.
“Sounds like a South African English person who lived in an Afrikaans dominated area. Loved the movie”.
“She sounds like that lady that was on youtube and kyknet that made diy things”.
“I’m South African, English and Afrikaans my language. And she knocked it out of the park.”
But it wasn’t well-received all round after one user said “I’m South African and I find this movie offensive South African people sound nothing like that that actress is Australian she wouldn’t know what afrikaans would sound like if it jumped [up] and smacked her in the face.”
Another went on to say that “Terrible. No foreign actor has ever been able to master the Afrikaans South African accent.”
“Wow,that is pretty bad,why do foreign actors think we all sound like planks from some klein dorpie?”
Wilson’s Australian accent also took center stage as someone said “Her Australian accent helps a little.”
But we’ll let you be the judge. Make sure to watch it from the one minute mark.
But this isn’t Wilson’s first redo with the accent after pulling out the big guns in a 2015 Pitch Perfect interview where the actress brought through a “Goeie more” here and a “Hoe gaan dit met jou” over there.
How would you rate her performance?
Picture: Netflix