# Worst American accents in mainstream roles **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 19, 2015, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357 "2015-03-19T04:43:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2015, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/101 "2015-03-20T23:43:59Z")
You should be glad you’ve never heard Patterson Joseph’s “American” accent on Jekyll I’m British myself and it made my ears sore. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/102 "2015-03-22T06:16:30Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Anderson is bi. > -[dialectal](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bidialectal), that is. > > I know the word because I am, too. I did not know this. I assume one dialect is South African, as you’ve talked about that before. What’s the other one? Also, Hugh Laurie’s accent is so good enough that it fooled the the director on _House_. Yes, he has a single word here or there that is wrong, but it’s not wrong as in sounding British, just slightly out of place for the accent he is mimicking. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/103 "2015-03-22T11:22:54Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I did not know this. I assume one dialect is South African, as you’ve talked about that before. What’s the other one? I code-switch between the Cape Flats dialect of South African English and BBC English (more or less, there’s a touch of Estuary in there too, innit?), with the latter being my natural everyday dialect (as in, it’s what I use both at work and at home) and the former only really getting use nowadays when I visit my parents. Dialects aren’t like languages, they’re not fixed at an early age, I think. I mean, I only started switching dialects from the age of 12 or so (when I first had English-from-England friends), and didn’t _complete_ the switch until I was 18 (when I was in Uni res, and didn’t speak to Cape Flats speakers for weeks at a time). But it’s how I speak now even if I’m talking in my sleep. Apparently. ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/104 "2015-03-22T11:34:22Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > The clear all-time winners are every single character in the **Doctor Who** Season 3 two-parter, “Daleks in Manhattan”/“Evolution of the Daleks”. There are a couple serials from the Patrick Troughton era which also feature horrendous American accents – Space Pirates and Tomb of the Cybermen in particular. I’ve never been able to watch House because Hugh Laurie’s American accent grates. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/105 "2015-03-22T13:06:37Z")
> [@Rick Kitchen](#): > > Madonna apparently lives somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Next door to Jodie Foster. I don’t know what accent she was going for in Elysium, but it sure wasn’t American. Or French. Or English. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/106 "2015-03-22T13:19:43Z")
> [@Namkcalb](#): > > You should be glad you’ve never heard Patterson Joseph’s “American” accent on Jekyll I heard it. ☹ And I’d forgotten it until your post! ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/107 "2015-03-22T13:25:51Z")
> [@Ms\_Boods](#): > > There are a couple serials from the Patrick Troughton era which also feature horrendous American accents – Space Pirates and Tomb of the Cybermen in particular. The Seventh Doctor episode “Delta and the Bannermen” features some truly awful American (Noo Yawk) accents. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/108 "2015-03-22T13:33:31Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I code-switch between the Cape Flats dialect of South African English and BBC English (more or less, there’s a touch of Estuary in there too, innit?), with the latter being my natural everyday dialect (as in, it’s what I use both at work and at home) and the former only really getting use nowadays when I visit my parents. I code-switch between a (mild) Florida cracker/coastal southern American accent and a standard mid-Atlantic accent (which my mother has; her family sound very Joisey, though). When I lived in Jacksonville, almost everyone had some level of a southern accent, so it wasn’t a big deal. But when I moved to the Boston area, I dropped it damn quick to avoid being thought a rube. When I get together with family in Jacksonville, none of us sound as if we have any education…or teeth…or shoes. A casual listener would not think that everyone has a bachelor’s degree and several people have Master’s degrees, and everyone has traveled outside the US. 😛 In Boston…the mid-Atlantic accent works, though southernisms slip out. At my last job, several East Indian coworkers started using the phrase, “Bless your/his/her heart!” after hearing me use it. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/109 "2015-03-22T13:44:39Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Thick Cajun accents don’t even sound like English. People think that coach in “The Waterboy” was a joke, but if they’d ever really heard real Cajuns, they’d realize that it’s closer to the mark than not. But they don’t sound French, either, and people who are Cajun when they are speaking to non-Cajun Americans can, for the most part, code-switch to a dialect that is more understandable. I had a couple of Cajuns in my basic training unit. When they talked to each other, no one else could understand then, but when they talked to other people, they just had a very heavy variant New Orleans accent. And they never sounded French. I’ve been to Paris. > [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > It was bad; I was distracted and couldn’t watch the show, and I’m completely drooly David T fangirl. > > I know Americans have a much “flatter” accent than people from England/Ireland/Scotland/Wales, but his was really laughably flat. I wish the show’s writers had come up with a backstory and let him use a British accent. I’m watching _Gracepoint_ now. It’s more than his accent. He’s doing a passable accent, but somehow, he can’t act with an American accent. Or he isn’t trying to adapt his performance to the American production. Does he know anything about Americans or the US? there’s more to playing an American than _just_ getting the accent right. On the ep I watched last night, he called some people “You guys,” and had a look on his face like he couldn’t believe anyone would say that. It is painful, and he’s so good on _Broadchurch._ They should have cast an different actor. I understand the novelty of casting him, but it’s a shark-jumping trick, and if a show needs it before the first ep has aired, ask yourself if you should be making the show at all. > [@Daffyd](#): > > Archie Panjabi who plays Kalinda on The Good Wife drives me crazy… She’s supposed to be American, but constantly loses her accent and sounds British… I don’t think she’s supposed to be American. I’ve never heard her attempt an American accent, and when her estranged husband showed up, he was British. > [@GovernmentMan](#): > > Years 1.5 - 11. The ages you actually learn to speak. Her British accent is her natural accent. The American one was acquired later. I didn’t learn my Hoosier accent until I was in high school, but when I’m anywhere in the mid-West, it comes out of my mouth as naturally as my Manhattan-Queens accent comes out when I’m in the East. I even catch myself using rural undertones when I’m talking shop with car mechanics who are a lot of good ol’ boys who live in the country, where you can have a half-assembled car in your yard for four years, and no one cares. Heck, when I went to international school when I was ten, I even picked up a few Britishisms, like “pardon,” when I didn’t catch what someone said, and I probably still said that for a year after I got back to the US. I had a classmate in the US in high school who had come to the US from London when he was 9. You couldn’t pick up a trace of accent in his speech. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/110 "2015-03-22T13:47:02Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > In Boston…the mid-Atlantic accent works, though southernisms slip out. At my last job, several East Indian coworkers started using the phrase, “Bless your/his/her heart!” after hearing me use it. 😃 Oh, geez, I hear that all the time in Indiana. I never picked it up, though, because it’s a weird theology I don’t get. ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/111 "2015-03-22T14:15:47Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > The Seventh Doctor episode “Delta and the Bannermen” features some truly awful American (Noo Yawk) accents. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the serial, but I understand the accents used in _The Gunslingers_ count as war crimes. I think this is unfair, compared to the ones mentioned in _The Chase_ and _Space Pirates_. Dominic West et al in The Wire make me giggle, as both of my parents are from Baltimore (Patterson Park in Baldymore City for my mother and Essex in East Bawlmer for my dad). Nope nope nope. To be fair, like many regional accents, it’s hard to do one good enough to pass muster with the locals. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/112 "2015-03-22T22:38:14Z")
Has anybody seen the movie **Chappie**? Is Hugh Jackman supposed to be doing a South African accent, or is he just shrugging, saying fuck it, and using his native Australian? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/113 "2015-03-22T23:23:04Z")
The NBC series _Dracula_ starred Irish actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as the title character, who was posing as a wealthy American industrialist because this show didn’t really make a lot of sense. Anyway, I’m not sure it’s fair to judge his American accent too harshly since it was supposed to be phony, but it wasn’t good. It sounded like he was doing impressions of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush at the same time. It really undermined the sex appeal and menace of the character. The show also featured a very non-traditional take on Renfield (a perfectly sane African-American lawyer) played by Nonso Anozie, whose American accent was good enough that I was a bit surprised to learn that he was in fact English. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2015, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/114 "2015-03-23T02:09:57Z")
> [@Ms\_Boods](#): > > I’ve never been able to watch House because Hugh Laurie’s American accent grates. Unless your “grating” comes from the particular American English dialect (and any slipping thereof) I can’t see, as **BigT** pointed out, how you would not imagine he wasn’t American born and bred. He nails it 100%. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2015, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/115 "2015-03-23T02:15:24Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > When did Liam Neeson ever try to do an American accent? I see we have all decided to forget _Next of Kin_ This is a good choice. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2015, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/116 "2015-03-23T06:19:22Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Has anybody seen the movie **Chappie**? Is Hugh Jackman supposed to be doing a South African accent, or is he just shrugging, saying fuck it, and using his native Australian? I’ve only seen the trailers, where he sounded Australian to me. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2015, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/117 "2015-03-23T14:24:23Z")
> [@Sam\_Lowry](#): > > I don’t know if this counts as “mainstream”, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I remember being baffled by Paterson Joseph’s accent in the BBC show [Jekyll](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jekyll_(TV_series)). I didn’t even realize that the character was supposed to be American at first, I couldn’t quite understand him and thought he just spoke in a super bizarre way. He’s a good actor that I’ve seen in other British TV shows, but I guess he was going for an over the top character and no one noticed or cared that the accent was so over the top as to be unrecognizable. This is why I opened the thread. He seems to be doing some sort of bad Foghorn Leghorn impression with a racist twinge. It’s horrible. BBC is generally terrible at American accents. I’m guessing that we must sound high and sing-songy to British ears because frequently they’ll have someone chirping like a crazy person as an American accent. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/118 "2015-03-23T14:54:47Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > > [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > > > Has anybody seen the movie **Chappie**? Is Hugh Jackman supposed to be doing a South African accent, or is he just shrugging, saying fuck it, and using his native Australian? > > I’ve only seen the trailers, where he sounded Australian to me. Isn’t the simplest explanation that Hugh Jackman’s character is Australian? Most technology companies have employees from around the world. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2015, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/119 "2015-03-23T20:35:26Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Isn’t the simplest explanation that Hugh Jackman’s character is Australian? Most technology companies have employees from around the world. They don’t say, they just call him an ex-soldier. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2015, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357/120 "2015-03-24T01:35:18Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Oh, geez, I hear that all the time in Indiana. I never picked it up, though, because it’s a weird theology I don’t get. I know you speak Sarcasm. That’s all it is–no theology. It helps if you ladle on the syrup, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-american-accents-in-mainstream-roles/715357.md?page=7)