‘Jack Ryan’ Star Michael Kelly Doesn’t Speak a Word of Spanish
After a three-year wait, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has returned to Amazon Prime for a third season. The popular spy thriller stars John Krasinski as Jack Ryan and Michael Kelly as CIA station chief Mike November. Viewers have been watching in record numbers to see the action and intrigue. But for Kelly, the series presents an extra challenge: his character speaks Spanish, but he certainly doesn’t.
Michael Kelly stars in ‘Jack Ryan’ as Mike November
Kelly joined Jack Ryan in the second season, and his character was originally only supposed to be a part of the show for one season. They brought him back for Season 3, but according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one detail about the character complicates things for Kelly.
Mike is stationed in Venezuela, a Spanish-speaking South American country. So naturally, many of the scenes include characters who speak Spanish. This means Kelly has not only have conversations in Spanish, but he also has to conduct interrogations. Unfortunately, he doesn’t speak the language. At all.
Kelly was ‘freaking out’ when he saw the script
Kelly, along with co-star Krasinski, appeared on the popular Wired series where celebrities answer the web’s most searched questions about them. One of the queries Kelly got was “does Michael Kelly speak Spanish?” And the answer was a resounding no.
“I did not speak a word of it. And when I was offered the job, the guys who were pitching it to me, I said, ‘Look, guys, I really wanna do this show. I’m super interested, but I don’t speak a word of Spanish. So if you want to find someone who does, I completely understand,” he explained. “And they were like, no, no, it’s just a little bit.”
However, this didn’t turn out to be accurate. The amount of Spanish required for the role was much more than he’d expected, as he went on to explain.
“Cut to getting the scripts and freaking out when I saw how much Spanish I had to speak and do interrogation scenes. And I was like, ‘Guys, I don’t speak any Spanish.’ So I had to learn it for the show.”
‘Jack Ryan’ Season 4 is on its way
Fans had to wait a long time to see Kelly flex his Spanish skills in Season 3, but he seems to have figured out how to make it work. According to Yahoo, this season follows Jack Ryan as he’s unexpectedly accused of treason. He goes on the run, scrambling to uncover what went wrong. At the same time, he’s working to protect international political stability and stave off World War III.
Viewers have responded to the latest season enthusiastically. This makes it even better news about the status of Season 4. Not only has Amazon confirmed that there will be another season, but it’s also already been filmed. A release date hasn’t been confirmed yet, but since the eight episodes are already in the can, it shouldn’t be a very long wait.
Fans of Jack Ryan and Kelly are enjoying watching him play a tough CIA station chief. He seems to have worked so hard to develop his Spanish language skills that viewers don’t even realize how hard it is for him. That says something about the effort he’s put into the role. Although it seems unlikely that the series will continue beyond the fourth season, his three seasons as Mike appear to have made it worth all the work he did to get a handle on the language.
