So if it was Picard he didn’t see anything wrong with it, but if it was Stewart he took it with grace 
Was there ever an explanation in the show of why the character had a French name and came from a French village but spoke with an English accent? Or do we just accept that’s not so odd given the time period?
Pretty much this.
The recent series established that the Picard family fled France for Britain during WWII and didn’t return until after Jean-Luc was born. In rehearsals for TNG, Stewart tried a French accent but it sounded like a bad Inspector Clouseau impersonation, so Roddenberry rationalized that French was an obsolete language by the 24th Century.
Better to have the actor speak with a neutral accent (English, in this case) and leave it at that rather than try for a goofy fake accent. You would not, I predict, recognize the accent or vocabulary however many years in the future, anyway.
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I wonder, though, could Stewart pull off speaking French with a reasonable Metropolitan accent? I have mainly seen him doing Shakespeare, but has he been in any French plays?
In the recent episode of Frakes and Spiner’s “Dropping Names” podcast with Wil Wheaton as guest, they talk about this a little at the end of the episode. Wheaton and Stewart bought the same car - a Honda Prelude Si something or other. Wheaton bragged a little that he bought a slightly better version than Stewart did.
It would have been nice if they’d been able to get Stewart on the show, but I’m guessing his health was already deteriorating by the time they got the podcast up and running.
He also had a small role in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy as Karla, the Soviet spymaster. This was the 70’s mini-series, not the Gary Oldman movie. Then he played the same character in the sequel, Smiley’s People. He had no lines and only appeared briefly.
But, the first time I saw him and remembered him was on the old ARTS network, now A & E. It was a look at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s rehearsal for a performance of Troilus & Cressida. He played the part of Ulysses, and they were doing the scene where Hector meets the Greek commanders for some reason.
It was very interesting. All of the actors, including Ian McKellen, would recite their lines, then the director would ask them to make a few changes, and they would recite the lines again with the director’s suggestions. I don’t remember anyone except for Stewart and McKellen, but I’ll bet several of them are prominent actors today, at least in Britain.
I remember 2016 as a notable year as well. For me, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake was a blow, because I was a big ELP fan. Also, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds died on consecutive days. Then, Mary Tyler left us in January 2017. It felt like 2016 was trying to last 13 months.
Conan O’Brien bought a 1992 Ford Taurus when he got the late night gig, assuming there was a very real chance it wouldn’t last.
Tribute from Buckingham Palace
From the fourth episode of TNG season one.
Data: “For example, what Lutan did is similar to what certain American Indians once did, called ‘counting coup’. That is from an obscure language known as French. ‘Counting coup’…”
I wonder who had to field all the angry letters from Quebec.
Forget the letters from Quebec. Imagine how upset the Académie Française must have been.
The show wasn’t shown in France until the 1990s.
Indeed:
He sure got around. I bet it’s a fun bit of enlightenment when kids grow up and realize it’s Shakespeare.
This final 2 minute scene with Picard and the cast means so much more now.
Season 3 of Picard is such a wonderful treat for the fans.
I called 2016 The Year the Music Died.
He had a role in a BBC production of Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. Although the DVD packaging bigs it up, it’s actually quite a small part, and he only appears at the beginning and the end.
There were plans to cast him as Oliver Warbucks in a series of sequels to the 1982 film adaptation of Annie. (To this day, some viewers still swear they remember him playing the role, when it was actually a bald Albert Finney.)
Series of sequels? How many orphan stories were there?