Jai Courtney Reveals How He Manages a Texas Accent in Catching Dust

Catching Dust is in out now.

By Nicole Drum

In his new movie Catching Dust, Jai Courtney plays Clyde, a Texas man who makes his living as an outlaw in a troubled relationship with Erin Moriarty's Geena. For Courtney, who is Australian, a major part of the role was taking on Clyde's Texas accent. Now, speaking with ComicBook about the film, Courtney reveals how he found that Texas accent and what he did to manage it — and it turns out, much of it came down to just staying in the accent once he'd found it.

"I work with Liz Himmelstein primarily. I've worked with her on many, many things. She's a fantastic world class dialect coach and we didn't do a lot of sessions, but whenever I have to do something regional, I'll go to her and kind of generally have a loose sense of something and then we try and pinpoint some sort of landmark stuff that helps you get a little more specific," Courtney said.  "And my only thing which works for me personally is I stay in it and that goes if I'm even just doing a general American accent that I tend to find muscularly it's more helpful for me. And then you're sort of, there's just less self-consciousness when it becomes… it's weird at first your first couple of days on set, it feels very exhausting and then you sort of flip into a zone where it's actually more exhausting to jump in and out so, there's nothing like method or anything about that, I don't think, but it is a little bit of like sitting in Clyde for the duration and that just helps it reach an authenticity, I find."

Erin Moriarty Revealed How She and Courtney Prepared for Catching Dust

In addition to finding the accent for his character, Courtney and Moriarty had to do a little preparation for the intense and complex relationship between Geena and Clyde and speaking with ComicBook, Moriarty explained that she and Courtney wrote one another letters as their characters from the early days of their relationship.

"We're both very intense, insane people and that's just the truth, in like a good way. But the second we met, we met for lunch and it turned into a six-hour lunch and like, we're just cliche in terms of like actors are intense, emotionally rich people and we both are but we're both very well-intentioned, loved the story, loved the script and wanted to give it our all," Moriarty said. "I've spoken about this, but our process of preparing was writing letters to each other as Geena and Clyde. And I think that was so important because it was letters that we wrote to each other when we first met. And so, we needed to find the love in order to find the intensity that would transpire later on because whenever toxicity or intensity is of that magnitude, it's going to start out with an equivalent magnitude of love, right? And so, that was his idea and it was a really brilliant idea and it set us up to show up to set, we felt totally safe with each other, which is also equally as important. But we also, we knew, we knew where we had come from. We knew the emotional stakes and every moment that was emotionally loaded felt justified and not forced but fed by our conscientious approach towards day one and form that day on moving forward."

Courtney Would Love to Return to DC as Captain Boomerang

While Courtney is currently starring in Catching Dust, the actor isn't ready let go of his DC character, Captain Boomerang, just yet. The actor played the character in both 2016's Suicide Squad and in 2021's The Suicide Squad, with the character getting killed off in the opening scene of the latter film. But when it comes to the potential to play someone new for DC, Courtney is still stuck on Boomerang.

"At this point, no. I mean I've always kind of been candid about that. Boomerang was so much fun to play. I would love to see him come back in some capacity," Courtney explained. "It's impossible to imagine, right now, that that's on the DC hit list. But who knows? I mean, I've always had a dream of finding a way to do an origin story with him, I know he's not like the most beloved character from that canon, but he was so much fun to play and I just think doing something in that space with such irreverence, and just that jovial sort of sensibility would just be a hoot.

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"So, listen, I'm open to it if the opportunity ever came and the phone rang and they wanted me to resurrect that part."

Catching Dust, starring Moriarty and Courtney along with Dina Shihabi and Ryan Corr. The film is produced by Gatt, Mark David, Jon Katz, and Edward R. Pressman, is available on Apple TV, Prime Video, and more now.

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