Dodgy British accents in films/tv

[sauvignonbonk]

Watched 2 things on Netflix recently (haunting of bly manor and Juliet, naked) which featured American/Australian actors putting on really dodgy British accents and it was so distracting! Surely just cast somebody who can do the accent correctly or is actually British themselves?

It must happen the other way round as well but I’d never be able to tell if somebody was doing a poor American accent.

As much as I love The Boys and Karl Urban in anything, his Billy Butcher accent is atrocious sorry Karl!

Oh my god yes they're always terrible!

American horror story - Roanoke. Kathy Bates does probably the worst English/British accent I have ever heard, to the point where I can barely understand what the hell she is trying to say.

For me it's the dialect that's written. An actor cn have a perfectly fine British accent, but will use American idioms such as replying 'sure' when asked something, or refering to the boot of a car as the 'trunk'.

Kathy Bates in AHS was meant to be a Baltimore accent wasn't it?

What exactly is a 'British' accent?

Accents vary enormously all over Britain.

Having lived in America I’d say there’s a lot less regionalism in accents - you can easily tell if someone is from Louisiana or New York, but not the difference between two cities within either state (generally). It can be near impossible to tell the difference between neighbouring states the majority of the time! So I do think “American” is easier to mimic.

That said Michael C Hall (the guy who played Dexter) was pretty convincing in the Netflix show Safe. I remember googling his nationality during the first episode.

Oh and Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones. She was convincing too.

The “ scottish “ accent in Shrek makes it unwatchable for me

Mel Gibson as William Wallace. Truly awful. As if messing with the actual historical facts wasn’t bad enough.....

Gwyneth Paltrow can do a decent English accent, viz Shakespeare in Love and Sliding Doors.

Keanu in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Love him, but not with an "English" accent.

Anne Hathaway's ?Northern? accent in One Day. She really needed a better dialect coach.

We just watched Chernobyl (late to the party I know) and I just couldn’t get over the fact that everyone spoke in English regional accents rather than Russian/Ukrainian. It slightly ruined it for me as it didn’t seem as authentic

I think one of the worst was Josh Hartnett trying to do a Yorkshire accent in Blow Dry, a film about a hairdressing competition set in Keighley....

@PamsterWheel

Anne Hathaway's ?Northern? accent in One Day. She really needed a better dialect coach.

I had to turn this off after 15 minutes because poor Anne was so excruciating. This must be the worst!

I read an article about the filming of Chernobyl and they said it was a deliberate decision to let the actors use their own accents, because there's nothing worse than a load of terribly imitated Russian accents. I agree it did seem weird but I think it worked

I came on to say Charlie Hunnam in green street. I always thought he was Australian or something and doing a terrible cockney accent. Turns out he's English! From the North but still!

I think Americans might just hear "British" and not be able to differentiate unless the accents are really obvious. Somebody posted a video on another thread of an American Youtuber doing a "video with British accent" which sounded very convincing except it slid between Essex and Birmingham!

I thought Claire Danes was very good in Stardust though, I was very surprised when I heard her speak normally!

@Turnedouttoes ahh see I quite liked the fact that they didn't do Ukrainan or Russian accents in Chernobyl. Purely because you wouldn't get 100% of the cast doing it well, which for me would spoil it the other way as I'd find that much more distracting!

In answer to the OP: slightly niche but as a Welsh individual ... the 90's ITV drama Dandelion Dead has some of the worst Welsh accents I have ever heard - I'm looking at you Rodger Lloyd-Pack

@elQuintoConyo - came on here to say the same.
Loved The Boys, but my god that mockney accent (plus the awful Grecian2000 dark hair dye) killed my Karl Urban crush. Not really sure why he felt the need to do it, the storyline didn't need him to be British?

, credit to FortunesFave.

I was wrong, it's South London not Essex, but still. I wonder if any Brits have American accents that wander from state to state?

If you are into dissecting accents in films then I highly recommend looking up an accent coach called Erik Singer on YouTube. He takes clips from films and analyses how accurate the regional accents were, how well actors mastered the accents of real people like Jackie O, Nixon etc. It's so interesting as he points out all the little quirks that make an accent sound authentic and he isn't bad to look at either .

Amy Walker is another accent expert who is really interesting to watch as she slips from one accent to the next with breathtaking ease. But Erik has my heart .

I am from Scotland and hardly anyone ever gets our accent right.

A character in the most recent Peaky Blinders had an absolutely shocking Scottish accent - it became the cause of great hilarity it was so bad. The actor was Irish as well so I just assumed he'd do a better job?

Although I was then shocked to hear from people in Birmingham that the Peaky Blinders accent was crap. I would never have picked up on this, so that makes me think several of us throughout the UK wouldn't notice dodgy dialects from parts of the UK we are not so familiar with.