It’s perfectly natural. She has enough American markers in her speech to sound American to British viewers, but also enough Puerto Rican markers to sound Puerto Rican to Americans.
I’m American. To me, she sounds American. I hear no hint of an Hispanic accent.
:dubious: How can you not hear her accent? The Hispanic lilt in her accent is very noticeable.
Yes, actually, he did. See Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet where Robin played the toadying courtier Osric, a very small role.
His performance isn’t good: it’s a distraction from the rest of the movie, truth be told. Billy Crystal, as Gravedigger #1, is much better.
It baffles me that some people are convinced it is impossible to be BOTH “American” and “Hispanic” at the same time…
Did I say I didn’t think she was American? I was replying to someone who said they did not hear any Hispanic sound to her accent.
Puerto Ricans are American.
Yes, Puerto Ricans are Americans and we can stipulate that the Puerto Rican accent is an American one. But Puerto Ricans are (very broadly speaking) also Hispanic, and the Puerto Rican accent does have a “Hispanic lilt”.
However, regardless of which variety of American accent the television Anathema had, my original point was that the character in the book wasn’t any variety of American. She was English to the core.
On a complete tangent: in the David Tennant-led version of Hamlet the actor who plays Osric (who was apparently Ryan Gage) was a revelation. It’s only a brief role but Gage gets full value out of the whole “obsequiousness under fire” bit. Sorry, Robin.
Again, show me where I said that Puerto Ricans were not American.
Morgyn wrote, “I hear no hint of an Hispanic accent.”
…and…in the TV adaption she’s American.
I finished watching the series last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it! I don’t think I ever read the book (I’ve read several things by Pratchett in the past, and can no longer remember which ones, but at no point did this story feel familiar). I’ll admit that I had doubts after the first episode, which I found a bit slow, but by the end of the second episode/beginning of the third I was a fan. 
I am very glad that Crowley eventually got a haircut, because at times he was looking entirely too much like Geddy Lee. I’m also glad that his name was pronounced with the “o” as in “crow,” because otherwise I might have spent too much time thinking about Supernatural (as Darren Garrison alluded to upthread).
I was quite disappointed at the very end of the last episode, though, when Tori Amos’s “A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square” started to play. Not only did it explain two jokes that would have been much funnier otherwise – the pianist playing that song when we first see Aziraphale and Crowley at the Ritz (which made me laugh out loud), and the Narrator’s comment about a nightingale actually singing at Berkley Square at that moment – I also didn’t like her singing at ALL. Then again, I’m usually not happy with the results when pop singers take on jazz standards.
As for Anathema’s accent:
This. Though I couldn’t immediately identify “Puerto Rican”; I just knew something else was in there.
(Also, if one more person feels compelled to needlessly point out that Puerto Ricans are Americans, I might cry. It’s been very clear to me that “American accent” in this thread is referring to Standard [or “newscaster”] American, and that statements like Ascenray’s are referring strictly to how people sound. No one has claimed or implied that Puerto Rico is not part of the US. :rolleyes:)
I re-watched all the angel bits, and still needed more, so now I’m reading the book (on my kindle app – that’s new to me). The footnotes and internal monologue bits that would never work on TV are great, once I figured out how to actually work the footnotes. I think the book is paced a bit better (at least so far, I’m only 25% done), and leaves the jokes somewhat more unstated, which is fun.
For some reason, Crowley “talking” to his ferns gave me a chuckle every time I watched it.
“GROW!!! BETTER!!!”
I don’t really have strong feelings about it, but it does seem a bit randomly “multicultural” to have a Puerto Rican actress playing the American descendant of an English witch in a half-British miniseries with a mostly British cast. Especially when the rest of the cast doesn’t seem particularly diverse. I mean technically you are right. It could have been a “Chinese-American”, “Indian-America”, or “Scottish-American” character. She could have also had a pronounced Southern, Brooklyn, Long Island or Cajun accent for that matter. It would have seemed just as strange and random IMHO.
Truth be told, I thought her accent was slight and implacable enough, yet noticeable enough that it did give the character a sort of “odd” quality, not inappropriate for the descendant of a quasi-supernatural entity.
The line about a nightingale actually singing in Berkeley Square but no one hearing it over the traffic is straight out of the book. I suppose the song was inevitable, although I’ll admit I wasn’t particularly enamoured of the version chosen.
I imagined as much. I liked it!
Ah, but my complaint is that it (with lyrics) *shouldn’t *have been. They didn’t explain any of the other jokes, leaving them to be caught only by those “in the know,” and I was delighted by the instrumental version of that song being played. IMHO, hearing the lyrics made both the instrumental and the nightingale line not funny…or, at least, quite a bit less funny.
I am a big Tori Amos fan and while it’s not her best song, or even her best soundtrack song, I love her inclusion given her longtime friendship with Neil. I did love her being there as a fan of the book. It was like all my favorite things coming together all at once.
It’s pandering to cast a non-white actor as a mermaid. Not only is it fiction. Not only is it fantasy. It’s also a non-existent creature. But to avoid pandering, it would have to be a white actor. Interesting problem there.
Kids can dress as whatever character they want, so long as a white kid doesn’t black up.
WTF?
I think they may have posted in the wrong thread there.
Surprised that no one has mentioned that The Sandman has been picked up by Netflix and looks to be a sure thing, according to Gaiman. Now, I would say it’s unfilmable, but that’s what I said about game of thrones. And good omens.