Graham Norton...was Imelda always posh?

[Ulysees]

Imelda Staunton is on and seems very posh. I know she played the queen but I didn't realise she was actually posh.

I loved when she said about going home

She can't be that posh - she married a butler 😉

She’s from the age group where drama schools and grammar schools etc taught RP accent and regional accents were frowned upon.

Oh right just her parents had pretty ordinary jobs.
She's a fantastic actress. Looks like Will Ferrell or he does her.

I think she went to Cambridge with Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry and all that lot.

They all appeared in the film Peter's Friends together years ago. I think she sounded pretty posh even back then.

She went to RADA at 18 and had elocution lessons as a child: https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/spotlight-screen-actors-guild-awards-english-patient-26768/

I think she has always been well spoken.

I like her voice and it doesn't sound put on. I must have been thinking of someone else as was quite surprised how posh she sounded. Of course she's well spoken in the crown.

They used to knock regional accents out of you at drama school. You had to learn RP and heightened RP.

I knew Imelda Staunton 30 odd years ago and that is how she spoke then. Her voice hasn't changed at all. She was lovely then, absolutely no airs about her and she's the same now.

I’m probably confusing “Peter’s Friends” with real life. She did “Sense & Sensibility” with the same bunch of them as well so I’ve assumed they were all mates.

She reads The Gruffalo for Tonies - her voice is very RP! I remember noting it the first time we played it.

She was always posher than she looked, and I think she was given parts that matched her looks (especially Vera Drake) and so people think of her that way.

I had a couple of audio books read by her when I was a kid and she sounded posh then.