Ray Winstone’s Russian Accent Revealed
It’s no secret that I love a terrible accent, but in a movie filled with questionable Russian accents, Ray Winstone’s reigns supreme in Black Widow. Landing somewhere between Cockney and South African instead of any kind of Russian dialect, it’s clear that Winstone might have ordered his accent from Temu, and we were all left to deal with the consequences.
As the villainous overseer of the Red Room, Winstone’s turn as Dreykov is aurally challenging, to say the least, but while everyone was chuckling at his efforts to portray the Russian general we’d been hearing about since the first Avengers movie, he had a surprising supporter in dialect coach Adrienne Nelson, who seemed to enjoy it regardless. “Dreykov, his acting was so mesmerizing that the dialect issues became not so much a distraction as a curiosity,” she told Slate. “I wondered if the British and Russian colors I was hearing had to do with his backstory.”
The British colors? Certainly not a part of Dreykov’s backstory in the MCU, no, but the accent itself is so much fun! How can you stay mad at it? And though I should mention that Russell Crowe later gave Winstone a run for his money in Phase 4’s Thor: Love and Thunder, the latter’s Russian efforts win out as the best worst accent in MCU history.
Harry Styles Arrives
Eternals had a lot of problems, but its most enduring one was being the first Phase 4 movie to have a post-credits scene that was set to go absolutely nowhere. It took the cake because it briefly introduced Starfox, Thanos’s adopted brother, who was a prince and a space outlaw or something. It doesn’t really matter, let’s be honest. He never came back, nor did the Eternals themselves.
Starfox was played by pop singer and sometimes actor Harry Styles in a bit of stunt casting so blinding it that it actually hurt to look at it directly. To fully survive it, you’d have had to close your eyes like Indy and Marion at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Even then, you’d be cursed with less than 20/20 vision for all eternity.
It didn’t help that Starfox was accompanied by a Patton Oswalt-voiced Pip the Troll in some of the worst CGI the MCU has ever done, but now that all this is in my rearview, I feel like I can take almost any stunt casting Marvel can throw at me. Have Britney Spears come out at the end of Avengers: Secret Wars and blow up the multiverse, yelling, “It’s Britney, bitch.” I am now immune. I can take it. Harry Styles has prepared me for anything. Only fear is the mind-killer.
![Former detective Michael Debiase, 46, allegedly pulled his service weapon on a patrolman at the Myrtle Beach Police Department [MBPD] headquarters on Saturday](https://citigist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/South-Carolina-cop-loses-job-and-is-charged-after-he-260x140.jpg)