‘The Last Letter From Your Lover’ director explains why Shailene Woodley has a less-than-perfect French accent in the film

• Shailene Woodley speaks French in the new Netflix romance "The Last Letter From Your Lover."
• The director told Insider that Woodley memorized the script since she isn't fluent in the language.
• Because her character grew up in the US, the director said she didn't have to "perfect" the accent.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

In the early "The Last Letter From Your Lover" scenes set in the '60s, American expat Jennifer Stirling (Shailene Woodley) takes a picturesque trip to the French Riviera.

Elegant and well-educated, she rattles off French numerous times while communicating with locals.

"Aucun problème," she tells the buttoned-up waiter after he delivers news that her snobby husband Laurence Stirling (Joe Alwyn) fled lunch without so much as a goodbye.

And after a Hotel Mar i Vent staff member phones the room where foreign correspondent Anthony O'Hare (Callum Turner) is staying, she mutters a quiet "merci" before ascending to his quarters.

While Woodley's French is certainly clean and easy to understand, any Francophone is sure to detect a slight American accent in her words. It's to be expected considering the "Big Little Lies" star doesn't actually speak the language.

In a recent phone call with Insider ahead of the Netflix film's July 23 premiere, director Augustine Frizzell said she had multiple behind-the-scenes conversations about just how proficient Jennifer, a young woman that grew up in the US before getting married and moving to London, should be in French.

On a more logistical level, she was trying to gauge how much time and energy Woodley was going to have to dedicate to nailing the accent.

The director decided that Jennifer's French just had to be good enough to 'get by'

Fortunately for the lead actress, who also served as an executive producer on the adaptation of Jojo Moyes' novel, Frizzell decided that Jennifer doesn't necessarily have to be a native speaker after considering the protagonist's backstory.

"I don't know that she's had enough time. She grew up in the US and she's done a bit of traveling, so she just has enough to get by. That's how we went at it," Frizzell told Insider, continuing, "She doesn't have to perfect the accent. She doesn't have to be fluent, but she knows enough to get by."

As for Woodley, the actress was "great at just memorizing" her translated lines, Frizzell said.

As an acknowledgment of the actress' lack of fluency, Frizzell made sure there were flirtatious, self-deprecating quips about her and O'Hare's attempts at mastering the romance language in their early letters to each other.

After the British journalist promises to keep Jennifer "laughing with my terrible schoolboy French," she suggests that they "spend a few hours commiserating over our mutual inadequacies with the local language."

Woodley lived in France for 2 years before working on the film

Prior to her time shooting "The Last Letter From Your Lover" in 2019, the California native had a decent exposure to the French language.

As a teenager, her family hosted two foreign exchange students from France. However, she said during a promotional interview for "Insurgent" in 2015 that the visitors only taught her how to say "really nasty, sexual things."

Woodley actually moved to France at one point, residing in Bordeaux and then Paris for a total of two years before eventually returning stateside.

When Ellen DeGeneres asked the actress if she speaks French on a 2019 episode of her talk show, Woodley replied, "Um, no, I don't, which the French don't love."

"I get it," she followed up. "If I were French I would probably feel the same way."