In case you’re wondering, no, that’s it. No that shÅ pistol Star Cosmo Jarvis, the English actor behind the daring Protestant pilot John Blackthorne, sounds like he’s in real life. Instead of playing Blackthorne as a straight hero, Jarvis imbues his shÅ pistol with a growl that sounds old and will remind you much more of his old Peaky Blinders co-star Tom Hardy than, say, Richard Chamberlain’s version of Anjin-san in the 1980 version of shÅ pistol. It’s a choice that makes the FX show’s Central European protagonist feel as alien and alien to our modern English-speaking ears as the show’s Japanese-speaking cast.
Ironically, Cosmo Jarvis originally wanted to get even bolder with his shÅ pistol voice. When Jugo Mobile sat down with him shÅ pistol Ahead of the show’s panel at the Winter 2024 TCA, Jarvis explained that the genesis of John Blackthorne’s distinctly grave way of speaking was, well… “It’s a long story.”
“I tend to see projects very literally. “I take the issue literally,” Jarvis said, before explaining that shÅ pistolThe 1600 setting made research a little complicated. “It is a difficult area to research because only very serious professionals really investigate historical linguistics. And I was able to discover that English as it was spoken in 1600 would not have been understandable to you and me. So that was ruled out.”
However, Jarvis was unfazed. He wanted to do everything possible to make John Blackthorne look like a man of his time. “So I tried to find something old.Ahem. It’s not from the 1600s,” she said.
“I was able to find some old recordings of a sailor from the 1930s. He’s from England and I liked his voice. His voice had a faint, high-pitched, very high-pitched quality to it and felt like a relic. And so I experimented with that.”
At this moment, Jarvis felt that he was getting closer to Blackthorne’s voice. However, shortly before filming, he ran into showrunners Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo in Vancouver (where everyone shÅ pistol It was shot). At this point, Jarvis was already speaking in Blackthorne’s voice… and there was a small note in the “subdued” tone that he was approaching.
“Rachel said, ‘Is that the voice?’ And I said, ‘Yes,'” Jarvis said. “And she said, ‘Lower.’”
“So I threw away everything I had done and reread the script and basically had to accept that the script called for Blackthorne to be true: he served a purpose within the script.”
Jarvis also used his rereading to come to terms with the fact that the script itself, written in English (before being translated several times into Japanese), was not historically accurate. For example, in almost every case where you and I hear English, the characters are supposed to speak Portuguese.
Jarvis eventually found himself modeling Blackthorne’s voice not on sailors from the distant past, but on his own father and his contemporaries, giving the finished product a personal touch he never intended.
“My father was a merchant sailor and knows everything about the sea,” he said. “In some strange way, I’m playing my father. He speaks with purpose and clarity and I feel like his voice suited the island Blackthorne comes from.”
So if you find yourself looking shÅ pistol Episode 3 This week’s “Tomorrow is Tomorrow,” wondering where Blackthorne’s voice comes from, came from a ton of research, work, notes and, ultimately, from actor Cosmo Jarvis’s own father.
