Jeff Nichols’ is throwback filmmaking at its finest, so much so that ’s signature accent work essentially serves as one of the film’s primary special effects. The crime drama, which is a mostly fictionalized take on Danny Lyon’s seminal 1968 photojournalistic book of the same name, chronicles the rise and fall of a Chicago outlaw motorcycle club. Framed through a series of interviews with a fictionalized Danny Lyon (Mike Faist), Comer’s character, Kathy, recounts the story of how she became the protective wife of Benny (Austin Butler) and why she went to great lengths to shield him from the club leader’s (Tom Hardy’s Johnny) attempts to have Benny succeed him.
The now 82-year-old Lyon offered up the audio interviews from his mid-60s tenure with the real-life Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club, and Nichols, in turn, provided Comer with the audio of the real Kathy that inspired her role. But, upon pressing play, the British actor, who’s already known for her accent chops, quickly realized that she had her work cut out for herself with Kathy’s manner of speaking. “I would say that Kathy’s accent is probably the hardest one that I’ve done.
I was given 30 minutes of audio with the real Kathy being interviewed by Danny Lyon, and I was so struck by how singular and unique her dialect and cadence was,” Comer tells . “So I started working with a dialect coach, Victoria [Hanlin], and she ..
. told me, ‘All the vowel sounds are a contradiction. This is something.
