Robert Pattinson Just Realized That He Based His ‘Mickey 17’ Accent Off Steve Buscemi’s ‘Fargo’ Character: ‘I Kind of Did It by Accident’
Robert Pattinson had a revelation during the Berlin Film Festival press conference for Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17”: He based one of his wacky accents in the movie off of Steve Buscemi’s “Fargo” character.
In the sci-fi comedy, Pattinson plays the down-on-his-luck Mickey Barnes, who signs up to be an “expendable” on a new human colony and undertakes dangerous assignments he is not expected to survive. Each time he dies, a new body is generated, and much of the film’s plot is based on the adventures of his 17th and 18th clones — who both sport slightly different yet equally strange accents.
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“I actually think I realized today what I was doing,” Pattinson said when asked about his inspiration, bursting into laughter. “We were doing an interview earlier and Bong said one of the thoughts he was having for 18 was Peter Stormare from ‘Fargo.’ And then I think how that went into my head was to do Steve Buscemi as 17. I kind of did it by accident, but I don’t think I realized that until today. I thought I was doing something else.”
Both Stormare and Buscemi’s accents in “Fargo” hail from the region near the Minnesota-North Dakota border, where the 1996 film takes place. The dialect is characterized by “tight” vowels and a long “o” sound.
Pattinson was also asked what he would say to his own clone — let’s call him Robert 2. “I think I spend most of my time talking to myself,” he said as the room chuckled. “I don’t think I’d be very interested in what he’d have to say. I think I’d have a similar reaction to the other people on the ship [in ‘Mickey 17’] where’d they be like, ‘Whatever, just ignore him.'”
However, Pattinson did offer one thing he’d ask Robert 2: “What does the back of my head look like?”
The cast of “Mickey 17,” which premieres at Berlin Film Festival on Saturday night, also includes Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo. The film was originally set to release in the U.S. on March 29, 2024, but was delayed due to the 2023 actors’ and writers’ strikes. It was then re-dated to Jan. 31, 2025, pushed back again to April 18 and then brought forward to March 7.
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