How To Speak With a British Accent – This is the 4th in a series of articles by Lisa Theriot on speaking in different accents, a useful skill for voice over actors.
After several experiences of submitting a “first draft” of a voiceover and having the customer tell me that it wasn’t at all what they had in mind, I have learned to ignore clients’ directions that they want a “British” accent. Since the bulk of American contact with British accents and vice versa comes from media sources (TV, films, music) which lack geographical context, we develop the ability to identify an accent as British or American without the critical information of where in America or Britain the accent originated. And there’s the added complication that in any contemporary work, the actors are likely to have accents from all over the map in one show. This often causes the casual accent imitator to throw in artifacts from many different accents, all of which may be British, but which don’t ever occur together naturally.
Our accents are an incredible stew made up of where we have lived, especially during our language-formative years, where our parents lived, what languages we are exposed to, and often what other accents are culturally important to us. I don’t get it, but I routinely meet upper-middle-class white boys who sound ghetto not because they grew up in the projects, but because they like hip-hop and they think the lingo is cool. (I hope their Daddies can get them into Harvard as legacies, because they might find it tough to drop the “a’ight” when they want to.) Accordingly, every person on the planet has a different accent, so a descriptive like “British” or even “upper-class British” isn’t very specific.
I had two jobs that both wanted “upper-class British,” so I put on my best Sloane Ranger and sent drafts out. Both came back with “not what I was looking for” comments. I asked the first client to give me another descriptive to add to “upper-class British” and he said “perky.” Swallowing the comment that sprang to my throat that those two identifiers are almost mutually exclusive, I asked if he had anyone in mind, and he said, “The Orbit Gum girl.” Aha. Channel Vanessa Branch, send the files again, and the client is thrilled. Educated by that experience, I asked the second client WHO he was looking for and he said, “the girl on Royal Pains.” Check. One Reshma Shetty coming up.
Ironically, both Vanessa Branch and Reshma Shetty have spent more of their lives in America than in Britain. Reshma Shetty sounds pretty much in person like she does on her show (though when she imitates her mother, she can get very Indian); Vanessa Branch sounds completely American, so the role of the Orbit Gum girl is a total put-on, though an informed one from her years spent in Britain. But it was vital to have them identified, because it was their characters that the clients were really after. Their performances impressed the clients with an ideal of the image they wanted. I would never have come up with an accent alone that would have made the clients happy.
If you can target a person or a performance, between YouTube, Hulu, and other online media, you should be able to immerse yourself and pick up not only the accent, but the subtler things like mood and energy. It doesn’t have to be an impersonation so much as an allusion to the Who that’s wanted as much as the Where.
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