Catherine Zeta-Jones has finally done it. After nearly four decades on stage and screen, Swansea‘s most famous export is using her own accent in a leading role, and fans cannot get enough.
The Oscar winner, 56, plays retired drug smuggler Jackie Price in Kill Jackie, an eight-part revenge thriller landing on Amazon’s Prime Video on Friday 2 October, with some scenes filmed in her home city.
The first trailer, soundtracked by Blondie’s Call Me, has given viewers a proper listen to Price’s voice, and the reaction to hearing Zeta-Jones sound like home was instant.
Social media lit up within hours. Fans declared her Welsh at last, hailed the queen of Wales finally sounding the part, and welcomed the accent with more than one cry of Cymru am byth.
It is a milestone with real history behind it. Zeta-Jones has rarely used her natural voice on screen, telling Closer magazine back in 2005 that the accent was treated as a drawback when she was starting out.
“There aren’t many movies for Welsh lasses,” she said at the time. “That was one of my biggest problems when I first started.”
Kill Jackie gives her the role to change that. Jackie Price has spent 20 years living in luxury, travelling the world and selling fine art, all while hiding a past as an international drug smuggler.
The quiet life ends when she discovers The Seven Demons, a squad of the world’s most feared hitmen, have been hired to kill her. Convinced someone from her past is behind it, she sets out to take them down one by one.
Amazon says her buried secrets prove more dangerous than the killers on her trail, and lead her closer to home, with surprising consequences.
Zeta-Jones, who is also an executive producer on the series, said she had looked forward to exploring a female-driven story that “encompasses empowerment, identity and redemption”.
The series is based on The Price You Pay, a novel by Sunday Times best-selling author Nick Harkaway writing under his pseudonym Aidan Truhen, and filming took in Swansea alongside Bilbao, Lisbon and London.
The pedigree behind the camera is serious. Gangs of London’s Tom Butterworth is writer and showrunner, Killing Eve’s Damon Thomas is lead director, and John Wick producer Peter Lawson and Conor Keane complete the co-creating team.
Joining Zeta-Jones on screen are Daniel Ings of The Gentlemen, Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen, Hellboy star Ron Perlman, Fleabag’s Bill Paterson, Raff Law and The Mighty Boosh’s Julian Barratt.
Eagle-eyed viewers have already spotted the trailer’s nod to 28 Days Later, with Price crossing Westminster Bridge in hospital scrubs.
Swansea has watched her conquer the world in other people’s voices, from her Oscar-winning turn in Chicago to Morticia Addams in Netflix hit Wednesday. From 2 October, on Prime Video in the UK and Ireland, the voice will be her own.
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