Dodgy British accents in American programmes

[rugbychick1]

I'm currently recovering from surgery and binge watching "Bones" for the first time. Why do the accents for any British characters all sound the same? Now I've noticed it, why can't I un notice it?

I thought saffron burrows was much better in Circle of friends. Minnie Driver wasn't terrible but it was a bit exaggerated, all in the intonation. Whereas Saffron nailed it.

I’m still reeling from having accidentally seen part of Leap Year, which not only featured significant issues with having rearranged the geography of both Ireland and Wales (Amy Adams’ character is headed from the US to Dublin, her plane lands in Cardiff instead for implausible reasons, and from Cardiff she hires a boat to get to Ireland, which naturally docks in Dingle and involves her then getting to Dublin on foot and by bus and car via the Cliffs of Moher) but also an ‘Irish’ accent courtesy of Matthew Goode which suggests his dialect coach confused Dingle with Djibouti, Dorchester or Damascus, probably all three.

Saffron was pretty good I agree.

which suggests his dialect coach confused Dingle with Djibouti, Dorchester or Damascus, probably all three.

😂😂😂

Are you saying there is one standard UK accent?

oh I'll skip that! I wonder do they not care about getting it wrong. Or is the thinking that the American audience won't know and they're the audience that matters.

I know Emma Mackey is French-British (mum is English I think?) but I think her accent in Sex Education is great, considering she did grow up fully in France (I know she went to uni in Leeds).

Robert Carlyle is pretty good. Albie in Cracker being Scouse, Gaz in The Full Monty being South Yorkshire and his own Scottish accent in Hamish McBeth and Trainspotting

@Leapintothelightning well there is received pronunciation in the UK, which is the basic no accent accent? I prefer a slight soft northern accent tbh though.

I think so - about it being for the US audience.

I remember all the outcry about the Truly Execrable 'Wild Mountain Thyme'. The director's defence was that this was the kind of Ireland and Irish accents that the Americans wanted and so that's what they were getting.

It is one of the most objectionable portrayals of Ireland ever, from wild script implausibility to the sense that we are all living Famine-era lives down boreens with donkeys, and simple-headed to boot.

I also though Rene Z was too posh in Bridget Jones.

Loved Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors when she calls her ex a twat, with a proper glottal stop on the second T

Another actor I thought did great on the accent front - Alison Wright in The Americans. She's so believable. I actually thought her English accent in Snowpiercer was put on.

@Leapintothelightning I think when American actors are being coached to do an English accent, there is a kind of basic accent to aim for. If an actor is aiming to do an Irish accent, he/she has to know where is this person from, what's their background. I was talking to a guy on the phone today and he spoke well, couldn't fault any pronunciation, not a t dropped, but I knew he was from Arklow!

I heard Hugh Laurie slip a few times, but I have an excellent ear. You need to listen carefully.

We lived outside Philadelphia for a few years and I couldn't do the accent. It's very funny when you hear Tina Fey or Bradley Cooper do it--they're both from the area but don't usually speak that way. The white working class Baltimore accent is also hard to do, most of the Wire characters don't bother. (The Black Baltimore accent is different, I think 1 or 2 characters do it.)

I think British actors do better when they are doing a generic American accent and not a regional one. Nailing regionally specific accents is tricky. Many are fading in the US because of media and class prejudice, but if you know what to listen for, you can hear how actors get them wrong. Sometimes American actors do as well, over-exaggerating their Boston or Southern or New York accents. A lot of people have a 'light' regional accent--they think they've lost it, but there are little details you can hear if you listen carefully. (This is especially true of New Yorkers.)

What do Americans make of Margot Robbie? Being neither American nor Australian I’m taken in

What did you think of Matthew Rhys? I think his American accent is pretty good too.

I also thought Alison Wright was American until Snowpiercer. Both fab shows!

The thing I don't understand about Mary Poppins, is that with so many English people in it, why did nobody say our robins look nothing like the one in A Spoonful of Sugar? Or that "niche" isn't pronounced "nitch". I'll let them off Let's Go Fly a Kite, because it's a nice song, and wouldn't scan with an "and" in there.

I always wondered what The Mentalist sounded like to Americans, with a Welshman and an Australian using America accents in lead roles.

@ChocChipHandbag

Oh yes, agreed re Matthew Rhys!

@Tendu BJ is definitely middle-middle or upper-middle. She went to private school and then university (Bangor - got a D in French and couldn't go to Manchester) in the 80s.

She's also from rural Northamptonshire which is very much UMC (as opposed to the town, which is extremely WC).

Off-topic really but in my student days I acted in a Tennessee Williams play. Almost all Irish people acting, one Spanish.

Two American students studying abroad were directing it. They were amazing. Really talented.

We all auditioned with 'American' accents. The poor directors, it must have been painful, we were so bad.

They told us to ditch the accents completely. So we rehearsed in our own accents. By the end of rehearsal, we automatically started using American accents & not terrible ones - I was really flattered when an audience member (American) came up to me after & asked what part of the States I was from.

It was all due to the directors who somehow got us in character & the accents must have come naturally.

Lower-middle-class people go to private school all the time! Mn is full of LMC posters obsessed with private education. And it’s a long time since university was only for middle-class people (any subset of it).

Of course her family were posh.

@Tendu Mark Darcy is a barrister (family clearly from money). Bridget's family mix in the same social circles - they're slightly below the Darcys in the pecking order but not so much that they wouldn't socialise together.

Hugh Laurie was also an American in Veep, and his character in Avenue 5 switched between British and American accents. I think he was English pretending to be American.

In discussions such as this I always praise Jason Isaacs as he always seems to do a good accent.