‘Haunting of Bly Manor’ Viewers Are Calling out Actors’ Accents

Netflix subscribers may have been left on the edge of their seats by the tragic tale spun in The Haunting of Bly Manor, but at least one aspect of the Hill House sequel wasn’t perfectly splendid. In fact, some fans seem to think that the scariest part of the horror series wasn’t the ghost story, but rather the British accents that the actors’ used.

Having debuted on the streaming platform on Oct. 9, just in time for Halloween, the second installment of the Haunting horror anthology series offered a twist on Henry James’ 1898 novella Turn of the Screw. Telling the tale of a young American governess who travels to the remote Bly Manor, which is teaming with ghosts, to care for the orphaned Wingrave children, the series is set in a small English town, requiring many of the actors to take on varying English accents.

While fans were certainly impressed with the story told, many felt that the accents were less than desirable. As they pressed play on the highly-anticipated new season, which was two years in the making, numerous viewers aired their grievances with the accents on social media. Keep scrolling to see what they have to say.

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The series opened with Carla Gugino narrating the tragic story of Bly Manor and its au pair. Her accent, however, caused quite the stir, with many people struggling to to tell where the accent was supposed to be from.

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The narrator’s accent was the least of fans’ concerns, though. Most viewers seemed to take particular issue with Oliver Jackson-Cohen’s attempt at a Scottish accent. In Bly Manor, the English actor portrayed Peter Quint, though many felt his accent was a bit off for the character, with some Scots declaring it “so unbelievably bad.”

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The accent discourse was so prevalent that BuzzFeed even ranked them from “perfectly terrible to perfectly splendid.” Writer Sam Cleal, who offered the disclaimer that he is “no accent expert,” but rather “a critical Brit with opinions,” listed Henry Thomas’ accent as the worst, stating that “it got lost somewhere across The Atlantic.”

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Cleal also seemed to take issue with Gugino’s accent. While he said that she “does a pretty good job of the Northern English accent,” he said that she “falters a little getting her mouth around those vowels.” He pointed to the series finale as an example, writing that “when she begins narrating in what sounds like general RP English, but then slips into an almost cockney dialect on the word ‘gentlemen.’”

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One person who got plenty of applause from Cleal was the young actress who portrayed Isabel Willoughby, Viola’s daughter. Cleal said he thought Zoë Noelle Baker did “a pretty spot-on job of nailing the upper-class English register!”

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As for Victoria Pedretti’s take on an English accent (she mocks one when speaking with Jamie), Cleal rated it “Dick Van Dyke/10.” He said that he couldn’t “help but wonder if that decision was crucial to the story, or a necessary manoeuvre!”

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Regardless of peoples’ thoughts on the accents in the series, Bly Manor proved to be a successful second installment of the streamer’s Haunting anthology. According to The Hollywood Reporter, citing Nielsen streaming data, Bly Manor racked up 1.82 billion minutes of viewing time in the week of Oct. 12, a 54% increase from the 1.18 billion minutes Netflix users spent on the show during its opening weekend. This moved Bly Manor to the No. 1 spot, displacing Schitt’s Creek.