Most miscast lead role ever?

I agree. He is not a bad actor and he is relatively commanding but the most distracting thing for me is how colourless his voice sounds. They could have taken many European actors that would be much better to recite the decidedly Skakespearean lines. Worst moments for me:
1.When he shouts "Una Rinascita!" in a mockingly Italian accent, like he was imitating Tony Soprano, complete with hand gestures and all.
2.When he shouts "Yeah!" and punches the air after hearing that the French are defeated, like that amounts to his baseball team victory.

As an American Doman certainly stands apart from the rest of the actors in that his accent comes out. Conventionally, for an American audience, such roles would have the actor speak with a European accent. In this case English with an Italian (Spanish?) accent. The other option would be for the actor to speak with an upper class British accent. This works for Americans as we understand the words yet the accent is European and we place the character in a European setting. However after 10 episodes the American accent does not bother me. I may even work to the good. Rodrigo sees himself as a foreigner (Spanish) among Italians. Doman's American accent sets him apart from the others. As to how historically accurate this may be I don't know. He seems to be a Renaissance version of the character he played in The Wire -- a savvy, competent political-bureaucratic player. As such Doman is giving a fine performance. The only problem I have is that he seems to be blind to the ineptitude of Juan.

Those of you who dislike Doman's American English among the other heavily-accented characters should watch the miniseries Pope Pius XII, which is also streaming on Netflix. The producers of that show would have had the same issue, with James Cromwell playing the pope among a cast of European actors. They addressed it by looping unaccented voices over the dialogue of everyone but Cromwell. I'm not sure I liked it better.

You could go get $30,000,000 and make your own production - that's always an option.

Every time i hear him talk i immediate think that this takes place in Rome, Pennsylvania. He has a horribly disconcerting lack of an accent.

I don't have a badge, i have a laminate.

I am watching this now and almost done with the season I have to agree, John Doman is awful in this role. Every time he says "Be gone from my sight" I just want to laugh out loud. His voice seems more suited to voice-over work and while I'm not saying he's a bad actor, his accent makes this series hard to take seriously.

Many of the comments here seem to refer to Doman's "plain" American accent. I would argue that the problem is that his accent is not plain enough. It is a Pennsylvania accent. Not strong, that is for sure, but it is not plain.

Many Americans, after a century of filmmaking, are used to the California manner of speaking or even parts of the Midwest. It can be considered "pure," or the lack of an accent. This is similar to the way Italians consider Roman speakers and the French consider Parisians -- there is no accent.

In Doman's case, we have a strongly regional American accent, so it is that much harder to accept him as a Renaissance Italian. Or should I say I_alian, as Doman is fond of saying on the show. He completely forgets there is a "T" in the country's name!

his delivery of lines is often clumsy, awkward, pauses at the wrong moments etc.

his dialogue is written in a way that doesn't facilitate him to deliver it, which is partly his fault, partly the writers' and partly the casting department's. He's obviously struggling with the long sentences, his intonation is frequently wrong