How's Your British Accent?: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

The bonus comes when her character has to go undercover ''as a Brit'', complete with an eerily accurate "fake" English accent...

Happens surprisingly often, with the fake-fake accent sometimes being intentionally poor.

 

{{examples}}

* In ''[[The Island]]'', Lincoln Six Echo is a clone of a Scottish man named Tom Lincoln. All clones are brought up speaking with an American accent to avoid confusion. So when Lincoln Six Echo first encounters Tom Lincoln, he's surprised by the other's strange accent. Later on, he "fakes" the accent to trick a mercenary hunting him and makes sure to insert "shite" into a sentence. [[Ewan McGregor]], the actor playing the Lincolns, is Scottish.

 

* On ''[[True Blood]]'' Englishman Stephen Moyer plays American vampire Bill Compton, and famously struggles to mimic a Louisiana Cajun accent. It must have been a relief when a flashback sequence showed Bill in an English punk rock bar, and Moyer got to speak with his natural voice.

* In the ''[[Bionic Woman]]'' episode "The Education of Jaime Sommers", American Jaime (played by English actress Michelle Ryan) has to pretend to be English.

** Actually he uses a different accent. Tennant's own accent is from Paisley whereas the one he uses in ''Tooth and Claw'' is an Edinburgh brogue. [[Mind Screw|So Tennant, a Scotsman, is faking ''another'' Scottish accent in a series where he speaks in an English accent as a character from outer space.]]

* In ''[[The Wire]]'', Sheffield-born actor Dominic West plays American police detective Jimmy McNulty, who pretends to be a British businessman to go undercover (so to speak) in a brothel. His accent is ''terrible''.

** It sounded a bit like he was lapsing into [[Redwall|molespeak.]] "Oi'm just an owld frriend of Xanderrrrrr's . . . Oh, to hell with it, I'm your man."

* In the ''[[House MD]]'' episode "The Socratic Method", the British Hugh Laurie's American titular character fakes an English accent to account for the anti-social hour he is calling a doctor to get further medical history for a patient (and there's at least one piece of fan fiction that claims House was faking again to allow for a crossover with a ''Friends'' episode in which Laurie briefly appears, with his native accent).

*** Though he does leave in one rhortic 'r'.

* Spoofed on ''[[Psych]]''. Shawn tries to convince a hotel clerk that he's with Interpol by affecting a British accent and then pretending that his natural American accent is faked as part of his cover.

* Irish Fiona from ''[[Burn Notice]]'', played by an English actress with a half-attempted American accent, reverts to her natural English accent to play a good-time girl.

** A hilarious lampshading in the same show: When Fiona's brother thinks Michael is a fellow Irishman, Michael has to go "undercover" as an American arms dealer. The brother is unconvinced Michael can pull it off, calling his American accent "a little dodgy."

*** This get even better because if you listen closely to Michael speaking "undercover" [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping|Michael nearly slips into an Irish accent.]]

* In an episode of ''[[Six Feet Under]]'', Nate Fisher imagines his girlfriend as an Australian. [[Rachel Griffiths]], who played the girlfriend, is actually Australian.

* In an episode of ''[[Chuck]]'' Sarah has to pretend to be an Australian scientist, allowing Yvonne Strahovski to use her normal accent.

* In one episode of ''[[Dollhouse]]'', Sierra gets imprinted with the personality of an Australian fan, allowing [[Dichen Lachman]] to use the Australian accent she grew up with.

** Additionally, in season 2, {{spoiler|it turns out before Sierra became an Active, she was Australian, and has Lachman's accent when playing "herself".}}

* Chuck on ''[[Gossip Girl]]'' is played by English Ed Westwick. Chuck is obsessed with Blair, who brings back a guy from her summer vacation in Europe who turns out to be a fake-American, his true nationality being British (though the actor is American). So Chuck, being Chuck, fakes an English accent to pull a [[Bed Trick]] on Blair... and we have an English actor playing an American character who fakes an English accent as done rather poorly by an American actor.

* Vicki Fowler arrives in ''[[Eastenders]]'' with an American twang, having been brought up in Florida by her British mother. The accent wasn't very convincing and after a few months the actress reverted to her native London speech pattern. This was handwaved as a deliberate effort by Vicki to fit in.

* A few episodes of ''[[Nip Tuck]]'' feature a British actor playing an American pretending to be British because he thought American women found it sexy. His "fake" British accent is, of course, flawless, but his American accent? Not so much.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Accent Tropes]]