‘The View’s Sunny Hostin Admits To Jeff Daniels That She Needed Subtitles To Understand His Accent In ‘A Man In Full’ 

Jeff Daniels went all out for his latest role. The renowned actor, who stars in Netflix‘s A Man in Full, stopped by The View today, where he told the co-hosts all about his process of getting into character as Charlie Croker.

While describing how he nailed Charlie’s thick southern accent, Daniels admitted he eventually just used vowels to speak as his character, making for some rather difficult-to-decipher dialogue.

“First you’ve got to come up with a southern accent,” Daniels explained, noting that “everyone” in Atlanta has read Tom Wolfe’s 1998 novel of the same name on which the Netflix show was based.

He added, “There are people in Atlanta that have a little accent and there are some that have that, and so … I stole from the internet, some senator is telling a big, long, five-minute story.

“And then Tom Wolfe writes that Charlie’s accent becomes so thick sometimes you can’t understand him,” Daniels continued. “So I got to blow it up, and then when it got so thick I just did vowels.”

As the hosts laughed, Daniels revealed, “I eliminated consonants … just good enough to go, ‘What did he say?'”

Sunny Hostin even admitted she “put the subtitles on” while watching A Man in Full, and Daniels seemed to hint that she’s likely not the only one.

(Editor’s Note: The View is on hiatus today; contrary to what you may have heard, The View was not canceled today. This article was originally published on May 2, 2024 when this episode first aired. The View will return with new episodes next week.)

“Kathleen, my wife, was going, ‘They’re not going to be able to understand you,'” he recalled, but Hostin insisted, “It was great, though! It was great.”

Later in his chat with the hosts, Daniels was asked by Alyssa Farah Griffin if he based his character at all on Donald Trump, “another real estate mogul we’re all aware of.”

Daniels insisted he didn’t use Trump as an inspiration, but told the panel, “No, but it’s relevant. Tom Wolfe wrote it in the ’90s, he based it on two or three guys in Atlanta that he knew … but yeah, the correlation is larger than life, I’m worth zillions of dollars when you’re really not, and we’re in a courtroom pretending we didn’t have sex with a porn star.”

The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC. A Man in Full is now on Netflix.