Kennedy’s Nick Robinson, Laura Donnelly on not using Family Boston Accent

While the upcoming Netflix drama series “Kennedy” will chronicle the famed political dynasty from 1931 to 1944, the family’s signature Boston accent won’t be as piercing.

Nick Robinson, who played Joe Kennedy Jr. plays JFK’s older brother who was originally groomed for the White House before he was killed in World War II, tells me, “We made an executive decision in advance that we were going to avoid the Boston accent. So it’s subtle. Plus, that accent has changed somewhat over the years. It was initially like this upper-class mid-Atlantic accent and then it kind of changed to [what] I feel like modern audiences are more associated with Boston’s working class.”

Preparing for the role proved to be a history lesson for Robinson. “I knew about the Kennedy family, but I didn’t know much about Joseph Kennedy Jr., so that was a fun moment to dive deeper into him, his life and his legacy,” he said at the recent premiere of his new Netflix rom-com “Voicemails for Isabelle.”

Laura Donnelly, who plays matriarch Rose in the eight-episode “Kennedy,” says she and Michael Fassbender, who plays patriarch Joe Sr. plays, had prepared to use the couple’s accents before filming began. “By the time Michael and I arrived on set, we had already decided that we had already worked on the accents,” Donnelly told me at the recent season 2 premiere of “Sugar” in Los Angeles. “Then we found out that the general mood was going to be to pull it back. We were kind of like, ‘Oh, I don’t know who should do that.'”

Not that they were asked to lose the accents completely. “Their accent was created in a very ambitious way, and so you have to have that reference,” Donnelly said. “At the same time, they had nine kids. We didn’t want these little kids trying to do that accent, so there had to be a way to bridge that gap so that the kids would be more of a general and Michael and I would do the more distinctive accents. I think that creates a kind of mix.”

The series is based on the book “JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956” by Fredrik Logevall.

Donnelly also spoke about the pressure of taking on the role of the iconic matriarch. “I think I was actually very lucky that I’m not American and I didn’t feel age-old pressure because we knew so much about them,” said Donnelly, who is Irish.

She continued, “So such pressure, I just try to shut myself out and it’s like I’m playing a real woman.”

Donnelly’s preparation included watching footage of Rose being interviewed later in her life. Rose died in 1995 at the age of 104. “I’ve come to admire her so much,” she said. “Oh my goodness, how she endured this with such dignity and grace.”