Ewan McGregor Had To Re-Record “Mexican” Beauty And The Beast Accent

If it weren’t for the intervention of a voice coach and a second chance at recording his dialogue, Ewan McGregor’s Beauty And The Beast character Lumière would’ve sounded more Mexican than French. Ewan McGregor is no stranger to changing up his accent for a role. Over the course of his twenty-odd years in film, he’s successfully masked his native Scottish brogue to pull off accents including American – as with his recent roles in Fargo or Doctor Sleep – and English, like when he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

But one accent that got the better of Ewan McGregor was the French accent that was required for his role as Gallic butler-turned-candelabra Lumière in Disney’s 2017 live-action Beauty And The Beast. Rather embarrassingly, at the time of filming Beauty And The Beast, McGregor had been married to his French wife for 20 years and their four kids spoke French fluently. It’s safe to say McGregor is familiar with the French language and accent, yet for some reason, a believable French accent evaded him.

In fact, McGregor’s Beauty And The Beast accent came out sounding suspiciously Mexican rather than French. It wasn’t even a very good or convincing Mexican accent either – more like the kind of caricature accent heard from Speedy Gonzales or Marlon Brandon’s offensively bad attempt in Viva Zapata! While McGregor was filming Beauty And The Beast over the summer of 2015, he was worried enough about his not so French accent to talk about it while appearing on British chat show The Graham Norton Show. Watch the clip below around the 1:40 mark for a taster of McGregor’s Mexican-French accent and what “Be Our Guest” sounded like with a south-of-the-border twang.

Nailing singing in a French accent for “Be Our Guest” proved a particularly big obstacle for Ewan McGregor – so much so that after his first attempt he convinced Beauty And The Beast director Bill Condon to let him record the number a second time. Condon also revealed in an interview with Total Film magazine that McGregor had the help of a vocal coach to perfect his Gallic brogue and developed what the director called “a flawless, beautiful French accent.”

Flawless might be an exaggeration, but at least Ewan McGregor’s Lumière accent sounded vaguely more French than Mexican in the end – if a little hammy. McGregor’s questionable accent aside, the real question about Beauty And The Beast is why on Earth is Lumière one of the few French characters in a film that’s set entirely in France?