British Accents (WAS: the casting of Emma Thompson as trelawney)

[bluesqueak]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Kathryn Cawte" 
<kcawte at n...> wrote:
> Barbara
> >
> > Just out of curiosity, how many of you Brits have seen Buffy the 
> > Vampire Slayer? Okay, now do you think James Marsters and Alexis 
> > Denisof sound British, because to my American ears, they sounded 
> > pretty convincing!
> 
> K:

> Alexis was better than James (imo) - although James was better as 
> pre-Spike William than as Spike. 

Alexis *should* be better at a British accent than James - he 
trained as an actor in London, then worked over here for about ten 
years. As I recall, he played both American and British roles while 
he was acting in the UK.

K:
> Not to mention oodles of bonus points for *singing*
> in a (to him) foreign accent in Once More with feeling.

James gets bonus points for that. Definitely. 

> K:
> Of course technically you could say that since Spike was using an 
> accent not naturally his own that that explains it's occasional 
> oddness.

They also gave Spike a back-story that included a lot of time in the 
U.S., which made it plausible that his accent would be 
slightly 'trans-atlantic'. It is a really good accent, though, when 
you consider that JM has spent almost no time in the UK. He also 
manages to shift between 'rough' and 'upper-class' Brit very well, 
depending on whether he's doing 'Spike', 'William', or 'Spike being 
Williamish' [grin].
 
K:
> I think the problem with a lot of non-Brit actors is they feel 
> they can 'do'British and are too confident (arrogant maybe) to get 
> help. 

Some of the problem seems to be the voice coaching. Stories abound 
from UK actors who've worked in the States, of U.S. voice coaches 
teaching the poor actors an accent that hasn't been used over here 
for 40 years or so. And then refusing to be told by the actual Brits 
that *nobody* speaks like that now, and that this is going to sound 
really weird when contrasted with the modern Brit accents ...


Pip!Squeak

You have been summoned; the first Harry Potter conference in the UK. 
http://www.accio.org.uk/