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.

If don’t want to be made to “feel small” (take issue with that, too - too many snowflakes around) perhaps don’t fire off from the hip LOLing at someone’s post when you very clearly know a good deal less about the topic than they do.

“You” being the other PP, not actually you @ginger1982, for the avoidance of doubt.

@AlwaysLatte

Ha yes, and the baddie is always English in American films!

I read that that's because the American audiences identify so closely with actors that they would turn against anyone playing a baddy. Anthony Hopkins isn't complaining, he's had some crocking roles out of it.

@AlwaysLatte

Ha yes, and the baddie is always English in American films!

I think the most egregious example of that is the SF film Alien Nation where a bunch of aliens land on earth and are assimilated into the general population.

They land in America. They learn English in America. They all speak with American accents... Apart from the alien who turns out to be the villain. He's played by Terrence Stamp. His character, like all the other aliens, landed in America, learned English in... etc... But somehow, because he's the baddie...

Now how does that make ANY sense?

@TheDowagerDuchess

Sorry I haven’t rtft but my first thought was of Game if Thrones. Not that the accents themselves are bad - except Peter Dinklage who’s attempt at whatever accent he’s trying to do is terrible! - but that they are a complete mish mash.

No rhyme not reason to which accents are happening in the north/ south / in between or another country. I doubt Americans notice though! I never notice when people in a film have different American accents, unless it’s Boston which I can usually hear, even when it turns out to be integral to the plot

I also was going to say Dinklage. I once saw it describes as an old fashioned American actor's British accent, and I think that's a good description. But it could be very annoying.

I think there was some attempt in GoT to make the accents work. But there were so many different cast members, of varying quality. And also child actors thrown into the mix. It helps to imagine them moving around a lot, I think - lots of them were fostered as kids away from home.

Asa Canadian, not many people catch on to Canadian accents - they typically think we're Americans (John Candy, say), or British (Christopher Plummer.)

I've seen a few cases where actors were supposed to be Canadian and clearly weren't. Juliette Binoche in The English Patient was clearly not from Montreal. Helena Bonham Carter doesn't quite manage to pull of the Cape Breton accent. The Shipping News is full of wrong accents as well, including Pete Postlethwaite in an incredibly embarrassing attempt.

Speaking of child actors, I have been watching the HBO series The Undoing. There are several British actors playing Americans with American accents, with varying degrees of success. The most successful is a young teen, Noah Jupe.

Happily, Hugh Grant's character is British so no attempt at an American accent is necessary. Nicole Kidman, Australian not British, of course, is pretty good for the most part, but not perfect.

I think the medium is also fairly important here, OP. Netflix has 60 million subscribers in America, earning them $2.5 billion (I think the website I checked meant dollars, not pounds). In the UK, there are only 13 million subscribers, still earning them a very substantial $500 million, but it’s nothing to the American money and subscribers they’re chasing. So everything they produce is going to probably think of success with the American audience first, even with things that perhaps seem “inherently British” like The Crown; if Americans weren’t interested in the British royals, I doubt it would ever have been made. Of the two things you mentioned, one is a Netflix original (Bly Manor), and the other (Juliet, Naked) premiered at a US film festival and is made by four media companies working together, and only one of them is British. Bad accents like mine can really turn me off a film or series because whenever I see something and I notice the accent is absolute shite, it really feels they’re saying, with where they put their money and with their lack of care, “You are not the target audience. The target audience is someone who wouldn’t notice this accent is shite.”

God yes- Bly Manor ending episode was the weidest example of Engish accent I have ever heard- the older gardener, slipped from a Windsor/pimms on the lawn to a Yorkshire accent within the same sentence - without even taking a breath.
I enjoyed the whole production, but that was truly dreadful.

Definitely GoT. I saw an interview with Kit Harrington where he said Sean Bean was asked if he could do an RP accent and he said no, so the others were all asked to do Northern. Not sure why the girls managed to escape that though. Only Jon and Rob seemed to actually do it.

Noma Dumezweni in “The Undoing”. Absolutely mangling what is clearly supposed to be Gen Am.

Script contains LOADS of “murder” and “hammer”. Nowhere to hide.

It’s dreadful.

@EmmaWithTheGreatHair

I haven’t watched the film yet, have recorded it for later but there’s a film where Liam Niessan is on a train. From the clip I saw his accent was terrible.

Just let him be Irish! I don’t think he can do a great American accent, it’s all nasally and wrong!

Still love his films though.

Liam's weird accent in love actually

Amanda Burton in waterloo road

Liam Neeson pretending to be ‘cockney’ in the dead pool was awful.....it ended up like a weird Australian.