Why It Was Important What If...?'s Watcher Didn't Have a British Accent - CBR - Comic Book Resources

Breaking from the expected norms of pop culture, Uatu -- better known as The Watcher to Marvel comic book fans -- will not feature a British accent in the Disney+ series What If...?

Jeffery Wright, well-known for his roles as Bernard Lowe in HBO's Westworld and Beetee in Lionsgate's Hunger Games film franchise, discussed his new role as The Watcher with Entertainment Weekly. He explained how he is breaking a longtime pattern when it comes to voicing wise and powerful characters in entertainment media, saying, "A lot of times, we hear a character like this that's very powerful and wise and dramatic, if you look at some of the old films of Greek mythology and even Egyptian mythology and things like this or history, we find that the characters have a British accent."

"And I have never really figured out why that is. Why does every wise man in the history of cinema or wise woman or sage need to be British? So the first time we encounter The Watcher in the comics on the moon, I figured it was wide open where we could go with the voice and how can we craft together an idea and music to his voice that's resonant today. So I just went for it and put it down."

Wright joked, "Every ancient Egyptian seems to have spoken with a British accent, every ancient Egyptian went to Cambridge apparently. I don't know how that worked, but apparently, that's how it went down." The bizarreness of this trend -- this focus on associating wisdom and power with the British accent almost exclusively -- inspired Wright to try something different with his version of Uatu: "There was a lot of discussion about how does this guy talk? How does he sound, this extraterrestrial celestial all-knowing being who has powers in some ways beyond most of the characters that we've seen from the Marvel films? So how does he speak? I wanted to make sure that the tones of the character were new, that they were born of the moment now."

Wright's new take on the all-knowing, all-seeing character archetype will likely be a good fit thematically and tonally for What If...?, which will explore the MCU in a whole new way. Acting as the narrator for the series, The Watcher will guide viewers through different versions of the MCU, exploring what would happen if key moments unfolded differently. Based on Wright's comments, at least one episode will focus on Doctor Strange and another will focus on the late Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa.

What If...? makes its Disney+ premiere on Aug. 11, with subsequent episodes airing on Wednesdays.

KEEP READING: Black Panther Shares a Scene With Howard the Duck in Marvel's What If...?

Source: Entertainment Weekly

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Hayley McCullough (20 Articles Published)

Hayley is a News Writer for CBR. In 2021, she earned her PhD in Communication & Rhetoric from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and currently works in the Department of Communication, Liberal Arts, and Social Sciences at New Mexico Tech. Her research examines the linguistic structure of storytelling and pop culture. She can often be found marathoning horror movies instead of sleeping, playing puzzle games, and reading a probably unhealthy amount of fanfiction.