There are many standout elements in the story of Thor: Love and Thunder, but Russell Crowe‘s Zeus was definitely a fun addition. As a member of the city of Gods, he puts on a great show and we even uncover that Thor looks up to the fellow god of lightning. One of the fun aspects of his character was that Crowe was pulling off a fun Greek accent, but according to director Taika Waititi he couldn’t quite decide on which accent to go with. So, he just had the actor play each scene with both.
No. You would love to think that, I would love to think that. We actually talked at length about the accent. We wondered if someone did a Greek accent of a Greek god, is it going to be a farce? Will it be too silly? And Russell was very much wanting it to be Greek. But I wasn’t sure, so we ended up doing two versions of every take with Russell. One in a Greek accent and then another in a British accent. Because I felt people would think Zeus would sound British like Laurence Olivier in “Clash of the Titans.
Taika Waititi
He did highlight that the Greek accent was welcomed with open arms by the test audience, and it also worked out much better. His worry about offending Greeks has seemingly been solved and Crowe‘s gut instinct was on the money.
But then I realized in post that it’s actually more offensive to the Greeks to have Zeus sound like he’s British. And test audiences loved the Greek accent. I’m really happy with it. But, yeah, he had to do every take once in the Greek accent and once with a British accent because I couldn’t make up my mind. But Russell was right all along.
Taika Waititi
It definitely is interesting to see how these ideas come together. What stands out however is that he went through the trouble of shooting both versions, which may have put a lot of weight on various parts of the production crew, especially if he couldn’t decide even going into the test screenings. Perhaps we’ll get the British Zeus with the digital and physical release.
Source: Insider
