I've actually moved from derison to rage about this because @niarchery reminded me that Assad made an effort above and beyond to learn French without that having been a requirement when he was auditioning for Season 1.
Here's the quote from him:
About eight or nine months before we started shooting, Rolin called me and said, “How fluent are you in French?” I said, “Absolutely, non-existent!” And he went, “How fluent can you get by the time we start?” And I was like, “I can give it a go.” So, I got a French teacher, an incredible woman who was so amazing, and we just jumped right in. It was before the scripts, so we didn't have the lines to work with, so I started with just a basic crash course.
I studied every day, and it was quite intense, but it was also an incredible opportunity. I've always wanted to learn French! I never got a chance to in school. What an opportunity to be given, to get a chance to learn a new skill in your life. So, I'm really grateful to Rolin for actually making me do that. When we finally got the scripts and I got to a certain level, we were like, “Okay, now it's better to just focus on the lines and make sure I can sound as fluent as possible.” I think the advantage I have as Armand is, Armand is not native French speaker. So, we could afford a little bit of flexibility there — and that's not a cop out — but it's just an understanding that it doesn't have to be perfect.[...]
It was such a joy to learn and I'm still learning by the way! It's such a difficult language.
So here is an actor treating extra, unnegotiated demands on his labour as a gift and a joy, going above and beyond in his prep, talking about the nuances of how even though the character does have an in-text excuse to not be perfect, its still important to sound as fluent as possible, and ending up with, as I have heard French speakers say, the most authentic accent of them all (even though Sam is the one who should have been busting his ass trying to sound like a native.)
And then Hannah Moscovitch, when asked an open-ended question about who speaks the best French, instead of using the opportunity to talk about the efforts any of them made, just gestures to them all, and says, "They fake it really well".
This would be the same Hannah Moscovitch who reacted all pearl-clutching 'OH!' when she was told that the reason Assad might present as so humble is because of the systemic racism that British Asian actors face in Britain.
But of course, what would a white Canadian know about racism? She's only a heading a show with three non-white main characters set in multiple eras where race affects them in different ways.
Really, let's focus on the important point - how important it is to represent the Quebec French experience.
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