Aml Ameen felt pressure from the Jamaican community to perfect the accent for his new movie Yardie.
In Idris Elba’s directorial debut, British actor Aml plays D, a Jamaican who is sent to London after his brother is killed, and Aml admitted he felt pressure from the Jamaican community to portray his character in an authentic way and to nail the accent because actors frequently get it wrong.
“The pressure from the Jamaican community is real,” Aml said during a Q&A in London. “We’ve been, especially in the Western culture, represented in ways that don’t necessarily reflect how we are as people, first of all, properly, and then the accent’s a bit off. Shout out to the Jamaican bobsleigh team,” he added, referring to the accents the American actors used in 1993 comedy Cool Runnings.
To make sure he got it perfect, The Maze Runner actor, whose mom is Jamaican, went to stay with family on the Caribbean island for two months before the production began.
“My auntie Hazel took me everywhere to meet everyone and I had such an intimate time with my culture for the first time,” he recalled. “Being able to speak the language as someone that didn’t grow up speaking it, and it is definitely a language, feels so rewarding. Just being able to connect with people in that way… There was a community of people that came together and started to help me develop the accent and the world.”
By the time he returned to London for the shoot, Aml really threw himself into his character, by listening to particular music and placing items that made him think of D around his home, so he wouldn’t focus too much on the accent, which his Jamaican co-stars Shantol Jackson and Sheldon Shepherd also helped him with.
Aml ended up getting carried away with the accent and the Luther actor had to encourage him to “Englishify” it and “open it up a bit” so viewers could understand what he was saying.
However, the film has still received criticism for the dialogue being tough to follow, and Aml said it hadn’t been played to the “proper people” yet as “there’s a big community that understands Jamaican.”
Yardie hits theatres from 31 August (18).
