Samuel Bottomley was 'very scared' over Scottish accent in California Schemin'

Samuel Bottomley felt the pressure to nail his Scottish accent in California Schemin' as he was surrounded by a Scottish cast and crew.

In the new comedy, the English actor plays Billy Boyd, one-half of the Scottish rap duo Silibil N' Brains, who pretended to be American in order to be taken seriously by the record industry.

The How to Have Sex actor admitted to Cover Media that he felt the pressure to do the accent justice, especially having a Scottish director and co-lead in James McAvoy and Séamus McLean Ross.

"There was a lot of pressure, yeah, I was so nervous... You didn't actually realise how nervous I was, but throughout the whole process, I was very, very scared," Bottomley confessed in a joint interview with Ross. "It's very daunting, man, especially acting in front of McAvoy, like you say, he's a Scotsman himself, you want to get it right."

He continued, "It's a very regional part of Scotland anyway, it's like one I'd not been too familiar with, whereas like the American, we hear it all the time every day, so it's a bit more in tune. It were difficult, but it's a nice accent to sit in. I enjoyed it once we got going."

Ross insisted he "would not have known" how nervous his co-star was, and heaped praise on his "brilliant" Scottish accent.

"I remember watching the film and I couldn't believe how good it was," he stated. "I've grown up watching bad Scottish accents and his is top."

As an Englishman, Bottomley acknowledged that it was a challenge switching between his character's Scottish and American accents, particularly with Billy's questionable attempts at American in the beginning.

"You have to chart where you're at with it. But I feel like the bad American is harder to do than the good American because we had to put bits of Scottish in there," he explained. "My bad American, you can't hear bits of English, you've got to hear bits of Scottish, so it was a bit higgledy-piggledy."

California Schemin', McAvoy's feature directorial debut, is out now in U.K. cinemas.