Don Cheadle Was Brutally Cursed out by Fans for His Accent in ‘Ocean’s 11’

Actor Don Cheadle was once a part of an ensemble cast in the popular heist movie Ocean’s 11. But the actor put on a foreign accent for his role that didn’t exactly go over well for some fans.

How Don Cheadle was convinced to play his character as British

Cheadle was cast in the Steven Soderbergh heist thriller Ocean’s 11 along with a star-studded cast led by George Clooney. The character that Cheadle played, Basher Tarr, was the demolitions expert of the group. Basher was originally written as British. But Soderbergh would later change the nationality of the character. Cheadle, however, was convinced that the character’s origins didn’t need changing even if he himself was playing the role.

“Well it was actually written British at first and there were some casting decisions that made Steven want to go away from making him British. But I was talking to my manager and she said why don’t you just do it British? Why do you have to change it? Then I thought, ya, why should I change it? So I went to Steven and said, why should we change it? So we just kind of kept it like that and it turned out to be a lot of fun,” Cheadle once said in an interview with Tribute.

To hone the accent, Cheadle would speak with it through the majority of filming.

“I kind of had to stay in it all day to ensure that I wouldn’t fall out of it. I don’t know if I did or not, but that was the goal. So yes, I had to stay in it because it was easy to drop out of it,” he said.

Don Cheadle was cursed out by fans to his face for his ‘Ocean’s 11’ accent

Cheadle might have been better off playing the character as American after all. His accent in the feature ended up being panned by critics and audiences alike. But the Iron Man 2 star was well aware of the negative reception his accent received. Especially since fans weren’t afraid to let Cheadle know about their feelings on his Ocean’s 11 performance personally.

“I’ve taken so much s*** for that,” Cheadle said in a 2011 interview with The Guardian. “I went to the Baftas, never been to London before, I’m walking down the street from my hotel, trying to get a little lunch or something. And literally, every 40, 50ft…one guy almost literally cut across two lanes of traffic to cuss me out for that. ‘Don’t f***ing do that again.’ Or sometimes, ‘Well, it wasn’t bad,’ It literally seemed to depend on what street I was on: Covent Garden – ‘F*** you!'”

Cheadle confided that he couldn’t even escape the criticisms when promoting other films.

“I’d be trying to sell some movie and someone jumps in mid-sentence with, ‘Oh, wait we have to talk about your terrible accent,'” he recalled.

Don Cheadle supports a widespread fan theory about his accent in ‘Ocean’s 11’

In another interview with The Guardian, Cheadle supported a popular online theory that explained away his poorly received accent. The theory suggests that Basher was simply pretending to be British the entire time. It was solid enough for Cheadle to buy into.

“Now I can say ‘he was an American doing a British accent,'” Cheadle joked. “‘You guys missed that?'”