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| What Accent Do the Characters Have in Netflix’s Below? Newfoundland Dialect Explained. |
The characters in Netflix’s Below speak with a Newfoundland accent, a distinctive Canadian dialect that gives the fictional fishing town of Snook’s Arm much of its identity. For Josh Hartnett and Charlie Heaton, who play Calvin and Wade Penney, getting the dialogue right meant more than changing how they pronounced certain words. They had to capture the rhythm, humour and sharp exchanges of a close-knit coastal community where people know each other well enough to make even an ordinary conversation sound like a family argument.
The thriller is set in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, where the isolated community of Snook’s Arm faces an altogether unusual problem: a sea creature that threatens the town’s residents. The setting also draws on the province’s history of resettlement, which forms an important part of the Penney family’s background.
Calvin, his son Wade and the rest of their family have deep roots in the area, even though Calvin’s other children, Mary and Jay, have left their hometown. Their accents help establish those connections without requiring anyone to deliver a lengthy speech about local history.
The same dialect can be heard across the town, including in the conversations of Ruth, Biles and Officer Noseworthy. Although Snook’s Arm is fictional, the speech patterns connect it to a real place with its own linguistic traditions. That detail matters in a story built around a small community: the characters should sound as though they belong there, rather than as if they have arrived from somewhere else to investigate a monster and leave before breakfast.
For the actors, however, sounding like lifelong residents was not quite as simple as reading the script aloud. Hartnett, who plays Calvin, and Heaton, who portrays Wade, had to develop a convincing version of a dialect that differs from their natural speech. Heaton is English, while Hartnett also had to move away from his usual American accent. Their performances required close attention to the way Newfoundland residents speak, not merely the sounds they make.
Dialect coach Alison Kelly worked with the cast to help them develop the appropriate accents. Filming in Newfoundland also gave the production an advantage that could not easily be recreated in a studio elsewhere. Local performers were part of the cast, providing the principal actors with opportunities to hear the dialect in everyday conversation and check whether their delivery sounded convincing.
Heaton has spoken about the challenge of making an accent feel like a natural part of a character rather than a voice adopted for the camera. In an interview with the Toronto Star, he explained that learning a dialect involved understanding how people communicate, including their quick wit and the way they respond to one another. Mastering individual sounds was only the starting point; he also needed the confidence to deliver dialogue with the timing and attitude of someone who had grown up in the community.
That distinction is particularly important for Wade. His relationship with Calvin is shaped by years of shared experiences, and their exchanges need to feel familiar rather than rehearsed. If Heaton concentrated only on pronunciation, the conversations could easily become stiff. Capturing the pace of local speech helped him give Wade a more believable connection to his father and the people around him.
Hartnett took a similarly immersive approach while preparing to play Calvin. During filming, he spent time at local restaurants and socialised with cast members from Newfoundland. He also listened to The Broadcast, a local radio programme that exposed him to different regional voices and speech patterns. Rather than relying solely on scripted practice, he could hear how people used the dialect in ordinary situations, where nobody was stopping mid-sentence to offer an acting lesson.
Newfoundland’s accent is not a single, uniform sound, either. Pronunciation and speech patterns can vary across the province, reflecting its communities and regional history. That variety makes the task more complicated for actors trying to reproduce an authentic local voice. A performance can sound broadly Canadian and still miss the particular qualities that make a character recognisably part of Newfoundland.
For a thriller such as Below, those details help make the setting feel lived-in. The creature may be the biggest threat facing Snook’s Arm, but the town itself needs to feel credible before the danger arrives. The accents, local performers and real-world filming locations all contribute to that effect, making the characters sound like people with established lives rather than convenient additions to a monster story.
My take is that the Newfoundland accent is one of the more interesting details in Below, precisely because it does not need to call attention to itself. Plenty of thrillers spend a fortune creating convincing creatures and dramatic landscapes, then allow their characters to speak as though everyone attended the same drama school in Los Angeles. Here, the dialect helps establish the community before the plot gets properly strange.
It also gives the family scenes an extra layer of personality: quick exchanges and dry humour feel more natural when the actors understand the culture behind the words. Heaton’s approach is especially sensible because an accent is not simply a collection of sounds to imitate. Still, audiences familiar with Newfoundland may notice details that other viewers miss. That is part of the fun of regional dialogue, and it gives Below something more distinctive than another isolated town with a mysterious problem.
Ultimately, the accents in Netflix’s Below are rooted in Newfoundland English, with the cast working to reflect the province’s distinctive speech and local character. Hartnett and Heaton’s preparation helped connect the Penney family to the fictional town and its real Canadian influences. Did you notice the Newfoundland accent while watching the series, or did it take a little while to recognise where the characters were from? Share your thoughts, especially if you spotted any differences between the actors’ performances and the way people speak in Newfoundland.