James McAvoy wore a kilt for what might have been the shortest monologue in Saturday Night Live history. The Glasgow native had his Scottish accent (and his shredded calves) on full display and he made a Game of Thrones joke, explained that the telephone and television were invented by Scotts and threw it to commercial.
Maybe McAvoy was in a hurry to get to the first sketch. Or maybe he just wanted an opportunity to show off his real accent on American television without anyone from the cast trying to replicate it. Here’s McAvoy at the BAFTAs in 2016. Via The Scotsman:
“Every time we come to the BAFTAs in Scotland we talk about how amazing things are and that there is so much happening in Scotland. I think there needs to be more happening in Scotland.
“Proportionally, with the amount of people we have got compared to the rest of Britain, we need to have more stories told about Scottish people. “I don’t know why that’s not happening. I do know that our accent is foreign to many people and it puts many people off. “It’s not because it’s unpleasant to listen, it’s because they just go: ‘I cannot hear that, I cannot listen to it, I cannot understand it.’ “The only way to change that is by putting more accents like ours on telly and making people understanding it so that it doesn’t become some strange, foreign sound to them.”
It’s a beautiful accent. And a few minutes later McAvoy really leaned into his native tongue and Kate McKinnon was there to do a Scottish accent so maybe the monologue was shortened for time reasons.
