I'm not saying that Sam J. Jones was Flash Gordon - there's no such thing. No actor can be the person, that's a bunch of crap. People pay to see an actor be himself, whether he plays Hamlet or whatever. ↗
Working on the accent helped, enormously. I will tell you that when I brought Michael a correct "British" accent, one that my dialect coach was happy with, he hated it. ↗
We made it known that we were trying to show the reality of France. People think of Paris as the city of love or the city of light, but where you got love you got hate, where you got light you got darkness. ↗
By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt. ↗