Neil Patrick Harris, the American actor best known for his roles in How I Met Your Mother and A Series of Unfortunate Events, attempted an Australian accent during an interview on Channel Seven's Sunrise, with disastrous results.
When interviewer Nelson Aspen asked if he had mastered the Aussie way of speaking, Harris replied with deadpan humour: 'My Aussie accent is amazing actually.' He then delivered a slow, heavily accented sentence that sounded more Eastern European or Russian than Australian, prompting Aspen to joke: 'Thank you Mr Putin.'
Harris was promoting his new Netflix series, in which he plays villain Count Olaf. The role does not require an accent but involves three hours of make-up. The actor said he relished the chance to play someone completely different: 'I just like the notion of playing someone who looks nothing like me, full tilt.'
This is not the first time Harris has made himself look silly for comedy. On Monday night's The Late Late Show With James Corden, he split his pants during a Broadway Riff-Off, later admitting: 'I had a nice wardrobe malfunction, split my pants from my a** to my knee and I left it all on the stage for you.'
