For All Mankind: The Great American Astronauts Who Are Not Americans in Real Life!

As I write this, I'm one episode from finishing Season 2 of Apple TV+'s fantastic drama For All Mankind.
The show is a re-imagining of history: What if the USSR reached the moon first and the US ramped up their space program? I would describe each season as "a slow burn with a bang of an ending". It's a wonderful show with a wonderful cast.

As it turns out, a lot of the cast portraying great American astronaut heroes are not Americans at all. Ready to hear their real accents?

Sonya Walger

Sonya Walger, who plays the bad ass Molly Cobb, is from London England. She's the only one I knew wasn't American as I had just finished binge-watching the 2-season TV series The Catch, where she plays a main character. I'd forgotten that she also played Penny in LOST. (See a video of her below with Jodi Balfour)

Jodi Balfour

Jodi Balfour, who plays astronaut Ellen Wilson, is from South Africa.

Joel Kinnaman

The top billed actor in For All Mankind is Joel Kinnaman, who plays astronaut Ed Baldwin. Kinneman, who is Swedish America (his father is American), went to the high school with Alexander Skarsgård and Noomi Rapace in Stockholm.

Michael Dorman

Michael Dorman plays Baldwin's best friend and fellow Astronaut hero, Gordo Stevens. Dorman is from New Zealand but moved to Australia at the age of 10 and, supposedly, dropped his Kiwi accent to avoid being teased, adopting the Australian accent instead.

Are you surprised by any these? I didn't pick up on any accent slips in the show.

What other actors surprised you when you found out their on-screen accent was put on?

After watching The Wire without reading anything about the actors ahead of time, I was shocked when I found out that Idris Elba's Baltimore accent as Stringer Bell was fake and he's British.

Title Image: "Michael Dorman in season two of For All Mankind, now streaming on Apple TV+." Courtesy of Apple TV+