Bill Nighy Said Davy Jones in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Was Scottish Because ‘Everybody Else Had Nicked All the Other Accents’
English actor Bill Nighy is probably one of the most underrated character actors in Hollywood. Although not necessarily a star, his roles have been the key to many well-known movies in his nearly 40-year career.
In a recent interview with GQ, Nighy breaks down what it was like to play Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Davy Jones was a soul rent asunder by lost love
He turned his feelings of sorrow into evil, terrorizing the Seven Seas and forcing sailors to become his undead minions. Nighy said Davy Jones only spoke with a Scottish lilt “because everybody else had nicked all the other accents.”
When preparing for the role, the thespian wanted to know what direction to take with how Davy Jones sounds when he speaks, and the director simply said, “Wet.”
And the slippery Scottish accent was born.
Other prominent accents in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’
Many other accents and voices appeared in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Many of the principal players are English and simply used a close approximation of their natural voices. A-listers like Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, and Ian McShane all had some semblance of English accents in the movies.
Johnny Depp, of course, is American. His accent for Jack Sparrow was a take on Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, kind of a mock London accent.
Considering the source material of Pirates of the Caribbean comes from the historical Golden Age of pirates such as Edward Teach (Blackbeard) and other famous rogues like Henry Morgan, Bartholomew Roberts, Anne Bonny, and Captain Kidd, the accents aren’t entirely inaccurate.
But not all of these real pirates were English. Morgan and Roberts were Welsh. Bonny was Irish. Kidd was from Dundee in Scotland, according to History Extra. In the 1700s and 1800s, the Royal Navy was desperately trying to keep a hold on Britain’s claims in the Western hemisphere.
So to hear Bill Nighy give Davy Jones a Scottish accent is not far off from historical accuracy. However, most other pirates in movies have an English accent thanks to Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island from 1883, notes The Travel.
Bill Nighy said it was ‘sad’ on the set of ‘Dead Man’s Chest’
Nighy, in his review of playing Davy Jones, said it was sad to see him on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Because the Davy Jones’ visual effects were all CGI, Nighy was the only actor not in costume. He was adorned with 250 fuzzy white dots all over his face, a skullcap, and what he called “baggy computer pajamas” so Industrial Light & Magic could put the squid-like imagery into the final shots.
Nighy believed it was a very lonely place to be on an American film set dressed as an “idiot,” yet he was playing the main villain in the film.
Rather than being an idiot, Nighy’s performance was creepy and slimy, perfect for a pirate villain, even though his final appearance was completely different from what the cameras captured from hundreds of white dots and baggy pajamas.
It’s no wonder Nighy has been in more than 100 projects in his time as a character actor. He can obviously pull off many types of roles when called upon.
