It’s safe to say practice makes perfect.
Bridgerton heart-throb, Regé-Jean Page, told GQ on Wednesday that he used to talk in different American accents when he took Uber rides in the US as a way of rehearsing different dialects.
The actor was born in Zimbabwe and attended secondary school in London, moved to Los Angeles in his twenties to start a career in acting. He set out to grasp a huge spectrum of accents while he was there.
To test his skills, Page utilized his Uber rides by conversing with different drivers, “undercover” each time he requested a car by portraying a “New York or West Coast accent.”
In that, it gave a real-life outlet for preparation outside of read-throughs and tryouts. He also compared the activity to a pianist playing through scales in the morning.
“If you’re not confident ordering a coffee in that accent, in the place that accent is from, then that’s not good enough to go on screen,” he said about preparation.
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Page ended up getting a part as Leonard Knox on the ABC series For the People while in Los Angeles and met the show’s producer Shonda Rhimes in the process.
The introduction led to his breakout role as Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings, on Bridgerton, a Netflix adaptation of Julia Quinn’s Regency-era romance novels.
After watching Page on For the People, Rhimes immediately imagined him as the seductive lead. Afterwards, he agreed to sign a one-year contract with the company.
Speaking to Variety in April, Page said that the series felt “limited.”
“I get to come in, contribute my piece, and then the Bridgerton family rolls on,” he said.
Bridgerton was an incredible hit for Netflix, with a record 82 million households tuned in to the first eight episodes in the first month after its Christmas Day release.
Even though his time playing the Duke has come to an end, Page is slated to feature in several Hollywood films, including Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons and Netflix’s The Gray Man.