Russell Crowe Compares Accents Between Kraven the Hunter, Thor 4, and The Pope’s Exorcist

Russell Crowe has clearly been having some fun the last few years, hamming it up in the best way in all kinds of franchise projects, in addition to his prestige roles. In fact, Crowe has been rolling through a series of different accents while playing a lot of his latest roles, most recently in Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder. Crowe has two upcoming projects that he will be flexing his vocal acting muscles for: the true-life horror/thriller The Pope’s Exorcist, and Sony’s Spider-Man Universe movie, Kraven the Hunter. 

ComicBook.com got the chance to sit down and speak with Russell Crowe during the Pope’s Exorcist junket, and he broke down the acting choices he’s making for both Kraven and The Pope’s Exorcist: 

“The fact that they wanted me to play a Greek god, in a clipped English accent – I got offended on behalf of Greek people. I was like ‘When are you going to learn that it’s okay that the guy’s Greek, it doesn’t matter, ya know?’ The sort of conversation went backward and forwards; what was worked out with Taika and the studio at the time… they came back and said ‘Well you can shoot every shot in the Greek accent, but we also want you to shoot in an English accent. Then later, we’ll put the two together, we’ll test them both, and we’ll choose the one that’s the most effective.” 

“With this [The Pope’s Exorcist] you know he’s a real man. And there’s a sense of responsibility and a type of honor that you’ve got to keep close when you do something like that. Yes, I’ve taken poetic license with Father [Gabriele] Amorth, but what I’ve tried to do is capture a little bit of some core truths. The fundamental absolute quality and purity of his belief. And his sense of humor.” 

While it’s clear that Russell Crowe takes his vocal craft as an actor very seriously, he does hint that his role in Kraven the Hunter may be proving more challenging: “Russian: Russian’s difficult.” 

Russell Crowe’s Kraven the Hunter role hasn’t yet been officially revealed. Rumors have stated that he’s playing Nikolai Kravenoff, the father of Kraven, and a role that will give him substantial screen time in the film. Crowe’s admission that he’s had to work on that Russian accent doesn’t exactly challenge that theory. 

Kraven the Hunter will be in theaters on October 6th.