When the trailer for Wild Mounain Thyme was released last month, it drew a collective groan from the people of Ireland.
A film set in rural Ireland, it seemed to possess all of the trademark stereotypes you would expect from a Hollywood move set in this country.
Then you have the accents. The likes of Emily Blunt, Christopher Walken, and Jamie Dornan all gave their best version of an 'Irish brogue', with predictably disastrous results. We're not sure how Dornan got it so wrong considering that he himself is Irish.
For those of you who need a reminder, here's what all the fuss was about.
One person who did escape largely without ridicule was Jon Hamm.
The Mad Men star is also part of the cast, but as he was playing an American character, he managed to dodge the accent bullet.
He appeared on the Bill Simmons Podcast this week to discuss the movie's upcoming release, with the criticism of the accents inevitably coming up. Hamm would brush off the comment, saying that Irish people loved nothing more than complaining about how they are portrayed by outsiders.
Nine of out ten people who watch the movie is like, 'I want to go to Ireland immediately', cos it really does represent, he represents - and it's getting kind of a bit of blowback, mostly from the Irish because they like nothing more than complaining about depictions of themselves, kind of like the people from Boston...
There's a lot of shared DNA in there. But then they begrudgingly love it, so it comes full circle.
It wouldn't be good unless they complained about it, that's my take.
But the Irish are like, 'this is like, you're telling this weird fairytale, not all of us are farmers, some of us work for Google' and you're like, 'fine, we're not telling the story about the Irish tech boom of the 90s, this is not what we're doing.
We're telling a fable, it's a fable and it's a beautifully told like, snark-free, it's just earnest, it's a love story.
We've never been so offended by something that was so true. In all seriousness, it was all said in jest.
In fairness to Hamm, he absolutely loved his time in Ireland. Having never been to the country before filming this movie, he seemed to fall in love with Ballina and its local pub.
I'd never been to Ireland. It definitely made me wanna go back...
It really is, it sounds like a cliché or it sounds like a stereotype - but it's just, people are friendly, and especially in pubs when the music is playing.
That's what they're there for. They are there for the community experience. They're there for the thing.
And again, it feels like it was 100 years ago because you're looking around or I'm remembering being in a place where there are 65 people singing, drinking, breathing in each others' faces...
First of all, we were in a town of, I don't know, a thousand people, Ballina. It was this eensy little town, there was sort of one pub and the owner was there bartending and his wife would come in.
It was so friendly and family and lovely and welcoming and Irish.
You can listen to the podcast in full here.
SEE ALSO: 'If You Try To Get The Irish To Love You, No Good Will Come Of It'
