Becoming The Muse

Parish Series Shona Accents

Parish is an American Drama series that premiered on AMC on the 31^st  of March 2024

After watching the first episode:  the story is about someone who runs a luxury car hire service, who has to do a job for an international gangster of Zimbabwean parentage…..

Why I was drawn to this series.

It stars one of my favourite actors Giancarlo Esposito of The Breaking Bad fame who delivers a stellar performance in whatever role he plays, who in this production stars as Gracián “Gray” Parish owner and driver of a luxury vehicle service in New Orleans – I last watched him in The Gentlemen TV series (review coming next)

The storyline of a Zimbabwean gangster also had appeal to it, even though there don’t seem to be Zimbabwean actors in the production – they did get a South African actress whom I recognised from watching South African soapies…

The difficult conversation

I have always know American film and television to walk all over other people’s language and accents in creating characters which could have been better handled with maybe getting actors of a particular nationality to play that nationality or at the very least have a voice coach or language director – but I have never experienced it this viscerally since a language I am intimately familiar with was being butchered…

I had complaints about the accents in Black Panther, The Woman King and I have received comments about people complaining about how they are not impressed with the way their language, accent or culture is portrayed in other shows and movies I have reviewed as well… I understood it then, but it didn’t mean as much to me as it does to me now, that I am watching something that directly butchers my language…

Its almost enough to be a deal breaker…… but then also I really really really love the way Giancarlo brings to life the characters he portrays so I will complain yet keep watching — full review after I have finished watching.

How do you handle cringe accents in a film or series? Do you stop watching? Blog about it… complain to the powers that be about representation? Someone pointed out that sometimes you just arent the target demographic of a certain production….but I want to believe that producers can put a little more care in handling things like this.

have you watched Parish? Will you watch Parish – how atrocious does the accent sound to you or am i exaggerating?