Jodie Comer shares unexpected way she’s been preparing for 28 Years Later role

Jodie Comer has mastered a whole range of accents over the course of her acting career, from the Russian tones of Killing Eve’s Villanelle to a Midwestern American twang in her latest movie The Bikeriders.

Her next role in 28 Years Later, the long-awaited sequel to Danny Boyle’s apocalyptic zombie movie 28 Days Later, will see her take on a Geordie accent – and the 31-year-old star has been preparing for this new challenge in an unusual way.

According to a new interview with ELLE UK, Comer has been taking inspiration from Girls Aloud star Cheryl, who hails from Newcastle, by looking back at old episodes of The X Factor.

“She has been watching clips of Cheryl on The X Factor with her dialect coach to prepare,” the interview reveals. The singer joined the show’s judging panel in 2008 and later stepped down in 2011.

“I’m excited to get the first day done,” Comer told the magazine. “Danny just seems like such a confident, intuitive and intelligent director. The original was so loved, so I’m trying not to think of that too hard. I’m not putting too much expectation on myself.”

Comer is so adept at taking on different accents that fans are sometimes surprised to learn that she is from Liverpool.

The star told ELLE that her friends and family aren’t afraid to call her out if they hear her original Scouse accent fading. “When I go back now, people like to say, ‘Your accent’s changed, why are you talking like that?” she said.

28 Years Later will see Comer star alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes.

Cillian Murphy, who appeared in Boyle’s original film, is also set to appear “in a surprising way”, according to Tom Rothman, the chairman of Sony Motion Pictures Group.