If you have already burned through the new Netflix series ‘The Boroughs‘ and found yourself pausing mid-episode to ask why Geena Davis sounds the way she does, you are not alone. The question has been making the rounds online since the show dropped, and it turns out the answer is actually more interesting than you might expect.
The short version is that it is both the character and the actress, working in perfect, deliberate harmony. Davis has a sultry, gravelly voice that carries a hint of Lauren Bacall, and her character Renee gets to have a fling with a younger security guard played by Carlos Miranda. That distinctive vocal quality is not an accident, and it is not a glitch. It is entirely the point.
Renee Is Supposed to Sound Like That
Renee is framed as a kickass character who previously worked as a manager for musicians, and she takes a shine to the considerably younger Paz, an out-of-work drummer who takes a job at the Boroughs as one of the compound’s few sympathetic security guards. That backstory matters. A former music industry insider who has spent decades in rooms full of loud, charismatic people would carry herself and her voice a very specific way.
Davis herself has been clear that Renee is written to be unconventional. She has described the character as fully realized, sexual, funny, and a little weird. That weirdness is not incidental to the role, it is the whole architecture of it. The odd cadences, the dry delivery, the way certain lines land just a half-beat off from what you might expect, all of it is baked into who Renee is as a person.
Davis grabs her colourful, quirky character with both hands, according to early episode reviews, and that enthusiasm for Renee’s eccentricities clearly extends to the way she speaks. An actress of Davis’s caliber does not stumble into a vocal choice like that by accident.
How Geena Davis Talks About Renee
Davis has been refreshingly candid in interviews about how deeply she connected with this role and why that translated into a fully committed performance. She said the show seemed tailor-made for her, and that she loves exactly the kind of character Renee is: a strong one who’s self-determining. That personal investment reads on screen in every scene.
She noted that a lot of the characters she has played are further along in the journey toward saying what you think in the moment, just bolder, and that Renee is not dying of politeness. That boldness absolutely includes the voice. Renee does not soften her edges for anyone in the show, and that philosophy extends to how Davis chose to inhabit her physically and vocally.
Davis also described ‘The Boroughs’ as being about a group of residents of an upscale retirement community who band together when a mysterious entity starts killing their neighbours. Within that genre context, Renee’s voice serves a narrative function too, anchoring her as the group’s most magnetic and unpredictable presence.
The Boroughs Cast and the Ensemble Dynamic
Part of what makes Renee’s vocal style so noticeable is how it plays against the rest of the ensemble. The show teams Alfred Molina with a squad of septuagenarian character actors including Geena Davis as the charismatic art teacher, Alfre Woodard as a serious-minded former journalist, Clarke Peters as her New Age stoner husband, and Denis O’Hare in a scene-stealing performance as a retired doctor with terminal cancer.
Netflix
Each of these actors brings a completely distinct energy and register to their scenes, and Davis’s vocal texture sets Renee apart from the beginning. When Renee tries to report a crime to the town’s private security firm, a lazy rent-a-cop handwaves her concerns with a sneer, and in that moment her delivery makes the dismissal feel even more absurd. The voice is doing real character work.
The show bucks the trend of relegating beloved actors like Alfred Molina and Geena Davis to supporting roles, instead placing them at center stage in a Spielbergian romp about a group of senior citizens who uncover a deadly conspiracy in their retirement community. That central positioning gives Davis enormous room to shape Renee’s personality, and the voice is one of her most effective tools.
The Geena-sance Is Very Much the Point
There is a broader cultural moment happening around Davis right now, and ‘The Boroughs’ is very much riding it. She recently went viral after a cameo during headliner Sabrina Carpenter’s second weekend set at Coachella, where the young audience roared when they spotted Davis on mammoth screens playing an older version of Carpenter in a skit that paid homage to her 1991 outlaw saga ‘Thelma and Louise’.
Davis herself said the reaction blew her mind, and that she did not expect to suddenly be trending. But trending she is, and ‘The Boroughs’ is now the vehicle giving a whole new generation their first proper introduction to what Geena Davis actually sounds like when she is fully unleashed on a character she believes in.
Davis studied theater at Boston University and has spoken Swedish for years, suggesting a long and disciplined relationship with language, voice, and performance craft. So when Renee sounds a little weird, a little smoky, a little like nobody else in that retirement community, that is decades of craft making a very deliberate choice. The real question is whether you think that voice is as magnetic as the show clearly does, and if you have made it through all of ‘The Boroughs,’ we would love to hear where you land on it.
