Watch: Catherine Zeta-Jones Addresses Whether Leaving Hollywood Was “Detrimental” to Her Career
Catherine Zeta-Jones has no reservations about showing this side of herself.
The Wednesday star shared that she used her real accent for the first time while acting in her new show Kill Jackie, which is set to premiere on Prime Video Oct. 2.
Indeed, Zeta-Jones—who grew up in Swansea, Wales—got to use her Welsh dialect while playing the titular character, an ex-cocaine dealer whose peaceful life of anonymity comes to an end when elite hitmen are hired to kill her.
As for how she felt about the return to her roots? The Oscar winner told ITV News in an interview published Sept. 24 that the opportunity to use her real accent to portray someone from her native country was “liberating” and “freed me up as an actor.”
“It really solidified Jackie as a character for me,” Zeta-Jones continued, “because even though I don’t hang around with these dubious drug-dealing, fraudulent art dealers, I know that Jackie Price. I know Jackie.”
And the 56-year-old—who also serves as an executive producer for the series—didn’t just get to play someone from Wales, but she also got to shoot some scenes in her hometown.
“It was my idea to make her Welsh,” Zeta-Jones said. “It opened up a whole storyline. We actually went back to Swansea to shoot, which was one of the most wonderful things.”
The Mask of Zorro actress moved to the United States in 1997, but instead of living in Los Angeles, Zeta-Jones—who shares son Dylan, 25, and daughter Carys, 22, with husband Michael Douglas—resides in a suburb outside of New York City, which has given her some distance from the Hollywood crowd.
Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage
“I spend more time with New York business people, Wall Street people, art people,” she told People in February. “Our friends and our people we bump into are different than I would be if I was in L.A. And that’s not detrimental to L.A. and people who live there at all; it’s just I swing in a few different roundabouts here in the city.”
Still, Zeta-Jones isn’t sure whether her unique location has been “detrimental” to her career as an actress, adding, “I never quite know because I’ve never been in L.A. schmoozing.”
While you wait for Kill Jackie to hit TV screens, read on for more shows that are set to premiere this year…
Warner Bros. Television Group
Disney/Eric McCandless
Disney
Investigation Discovery/Warner Bros. Discovery
BritBox
Koury Angelo/Bravo
Apple TV
Shane Mahood/Prime Video
Paramount+
NBCUniversal
Netflix
Crave/AMC Networks
Jason Bell/Paramount+
HGTV/Warner Bros. Discovery
Steven Ackerman/MGM+/Sony Pictures Television
Netflix
(Photo by: Trae Patton/NBC via Getty Images)
Scott Gries/NBC
Heidi Gutman/CBS
Apple TV
Prime Video/Amazon MGM Studios
Pete Dadds/Fox
FX/Disney
Cassidy Araiza/Paramount+
Netflix
National Geographic/Disney
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