Domhnall Gleeson brilliantly called out Stephen Colbert for mispronouncing his name during a recent appearance on the presenter’s late-night talk show.
The actor, who is promoting his latest series The Patient – which he stars in alongside Steve Carell – appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earlier this week.
Shortly after being welcomed to the stage, Gleeson told Colbert: “You can imagine my dismay when a few weeks ago you had Steve Carell on the show and you said, ‘Now, in this series, you are with Dom-nom-nall Gleeson. It was a car crash. It was a mess.”
Colbert replied: “You can’t blame me! Irish names are impossible! Siobhan?!”
“I’m not gonna take this from a Colbert,” Gleeson said with deliberate mispronunciation to whoops from the crowd.
One viewer shared a clip of the exchange on Twitter, with the caption: “Deeply obsessed with Domhnall Gleeson calling out Stephen Colbert for making a hames of the pronunciation of his name.” The post has been liked by 3,358 people, at the time of writing.
In Ireland, the term “making a hames” means “making a mess”. A hames is two curved pieces of iron or wood attached to the collar of a draught horse. They are very easy to put on wrong by accident, hence the association with messing something up.
Explaining how to pronounce the name Domhnall, Gleeson once said: “It’s pronounced like tonal with a ‘d’ instead of a ‘t’, and the ‘m’ is just there to confuse Americans.”
The Patient is out now on Hulu in the US. A UK release date is yet to be announced.
