Worst accent ever?
I'm usually not one to bash, but here I am. Does Amanda Tapping have the first fake british accent ever?
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MovieChat Forums > Sanctuary (2007) Discussion > Worst accent ever?
Amanda Tapping Is from Essex, England. That is her real voice and accent from home. The accent she uses on Stargate is the one she learned. So it may sound crappy but it her real voice.
shareWell, yall showed my ignorant butt. Hahahaha. I always imagine accents should be stronger and more prominient. Well, I'm a fool. But it does sound weird....
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Amanda Tapping Is from Essex, England. That is her real voice and accent from home. The accent she uses on Stargate is the one she learned. So it may sound crappy but it her real voice.
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Dude, I hate to burst you linguistic bubble, but considering she left England for Canada at the age of three, the chances of picking up an accent at that age are pretty remote.
So I'm gonna agree with the OP on this one. The problem seems to be it comes and goes at times. If it was consistent, hey, to this here philistine it would sound A.O.K. But when the Ontario creeps back in, well it's all too apparent that she's faking it.
Yep, it's not that she's doing a "bad accent", it's authentic, but it keeps "breaking", and you can clearly hear the non-british creep back in during certain words.
She's getting better at holding it steady as the shows have progressed. In the pilot episode it broke so often it almost gave me a headache.
It reminded me of when Adrian Paul tried to speak with a Scottish accent during his early-life flashbacks in Highlander
Absolutely. Her accent on SG1 is her true accent, if you ever hear her interviews. This fake British accent was only too noticeable and jarring, considering its lack of consistency. She seems to be getting better, or its probably just me getting used to it. But its really odd to hear a constant mix of British and North American English in the same sentence.
I was wondering why they couldn't simply make her character American? Surely with so much suspension of disbelief required, they could have altered the characters in her past, or simply sent her away to England in her early 20s.
I was horribly irritated by the accent at first, mostly because to most of the target demographic for this show, Amanda Tapping's "real" (North American) accent is so familiar.
I guess I've come up with the only possible fanwank: that Dr. Magnus is British but has been living in the US long enough that the accent has started to Americanize a little. It's the same thing the producers of Angel and Highlander: the Series asked us to assume about their immortal lead characters.
Yeah, that's my hypothesis too.
The last two episodes were pretty good, compared to the lucklustre start to the season.
Woo Supernatural season 4 starts on the 25th Jan on ITV2!!!!! Can't Wait! A much better show.
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I read an Interview or saw on Youtube, at a Q&A with Amanda someone asked about the accent. She said it was hard to keep it the same at first but that people have to remember that when they watch the show, her Character is 157 years old. That the way words are pronouced and accents are differnt. Also that she's in the US and that the two accents would mould into one.
I don' t think its a "bad" accent. The show is awesome i don't care about the accent she has she could speak with a Aussie accent ( Have you heard Cluadia Black do an Aussie accent its terrible.. and shes a Aussie) and i wouldn't care.
harley_babe34 said:
The show is awesome i don't care about the accent she has she could speak with a Aussie accent ( Have you heard Cluadia Black do an Aussie accent its terrible.. and shes a Aussie) and i wouldn't care.
I'm an Aussie and Claudia Black has a perfectly reasonable Australian accent. It was how she spoke on all of the TV and stuff that she did before she developed that odd quasi-British accent that uses now. Shows like "A Country Practice", "Water Rats" and "Police Rescue" to name a few. I think her American accent could do with some work though after hearing her in "The Dresden Files".
I think Amanda's Victorian accent is fine. I am a big fan of Claudia Black. I agree with you about her American accent in Dresden Files. She should use the Aeryn Sun / Vala Maldoran accent all the time. There is enough immigration in this country that foreign accents are common place. I had a conference call this morning with people in my division at work. We all live in the US, but there were two Russian accents, two Latin American, two in Indian (Tamil & Hindi), three American (1 Floridian, 1 Midwest, 1 Carolinian).
shareIt seems totally plausible to me. I had an English friend who lived in South Carolina for many years. When the two extreme accents started to meld, it was cringeworthy listening to her speak, but it had become her natural accent.
sharehahha i noticed they only ask us to assume that when the actors are incapable of doing a good accent (David on Angel, for example.... my *god* i haven't heard an irish accent that bad in... well... i have no idea.
i'm willing to accept that an accent fades: i'm from britain and have lived in the states for years and now have an american accent. now that i'm back in the uk, i still have a north american accent: i've not gone back to british but i seem to have taken on certain words like a canadian.
so i, of all people, understand that accents are fluid and change with time/surrounds.
but seriously. her accent is just so bad i can't watch it.
well the show is the main reason i can't watch it, i've never seen such bad tv. but her accent is absolutely terrible. nails on a chalk-board.
" Let's fight that evil. Let's *kill* something. Oh, come on!"
How strange. I'm usually pretty good at telling what accents are good and bad and noticing when someone drops a fake accent, but I have absolutely no problem with Amanda Tapping's accent at all. I think it's really good.
sharewell, being from england helps me pick out bad fake english accents :P living in america has helped me pick out bad american accents as well. for example, on brit show jeckyll (great show, btw) Paterson Joseph has one of the worst american accents i've heard in a long time.
we have the ability to do really bad accents too.
from what i can tell, a lot more americans are acceptable to a bad british accent, simply because they don't hear our various accents all the time.
and i do love amanda tapping. but her accent is pretty bad. unwatchable, really.
" Let's fight that evil. Let's *kill* something. Oh, come on!!!"
Each to their own and all that, but I'm English too, as are a lo of my friends who like the show, and none of us has a problem with her accent. I can accept that maybe I'm missing a few moments here and there where she drops into Canadian, but to call it 'unwatchable' seems to be going a bit far. But meh, whatever.
I loved Jeckyll too, but it's been so long since I saw it that I don't even remember Patterson Joseph's accent.
It probably doesn't help that I'm an anthropologist and i do quite a lot of linguists and research dialects :P the show in general is pretty unwatchable, but amanda's accent is just... well it's one of the worst i've heard in a while.
for the exception of patterson's accent. i almost fell off my chair laughing at that one. Actually most of the accents on that show were pretty horrible.
:P
" Let's fight that evil. Let's *kill* something. Oh, come on!"
I just got my first glimpse of this show, and I have to say Amanda Tapping's accent is pretty atrocious. It took me a good ten minutes of an episode before I would allow myself to say, "Oh it's an english accent she is doing." I honestly couldn't be sure at first. To be fair, I am english so hate hearing a bad english accent. But what ever is coming out her mouth is not an english accent. Its made so much worse when she is saying ever so cliche sentences too, at one point she even said, "Bloody hell..."! Don't get me wrong, I like Amanda Tapping. But they never should of let her even have an accent if it wasn't believeable enough. And its not. It paints the whole show as a joke, and made me not appreciate any of the scenes she was in. If I were them, I would do my best to fade it out, just tell everyone she picked it up from being with everyone else.
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You do a lot of linguists and research dialects?
Seriously?
As a Mechanical Engineer and Computer Scientist with a minor in Anthropology [Magick, Myth and Religion] I suggest your doing linguists is needs to be revisited and elaborated with something grammtically sound and less jarring on the senses.
Please, can I just say because it drives me up the wall every time I hear the expression, there is no such thing as a BRITISH ACCENT. Britain is made up of numerous countries. You can have a Scottish, Welsh or English accent but not a British one. Thanks, rant over.
Now, from an ENGLISH person. Amanda seems to have adopted a Surrey/Kent accent and it's not a bad one. It's not cut glass, Liz Hurley, Queen's English but then not everyone talks like that. Amanda's not doing a bad job to be honest and I hear similar accents to Amanda's in Sanctuary all the time.
Compared to some of the English accents coming out of Hollywood, it's quite a good one and compared to some of my English compatriots attempts at American accents, which I often cringe at (which I feel must be insulting to Americans on occasion), I'm quite happy with Amanda's English accent.
if you want to get technical its a British dialect... accents are what people have who speak a different language, like a Spanish accent.
shareI used to cringe at David Boreanaz doing an Irish accent in Angel.
But someone who does a really good one is Portia De Rossi. Once on Better Off Ted, her character does something abrupt at an elevator and her Australian crept through on one teeny syllable that it jarred me. She's so good I forget she's not American.
Sharon Osbourne once interviewed the guy who played Spike on those shows and complimented him saying she can't tell he's not English. The best compliments come from nationals of the country the accent comes from.
I've watched Medium a time or two, and I thought something was up with the father/husband. There is something wrong with his accent though it is American. It is clearly American but not... you know? Then I found out he's English. that explained it.
House. His accent is clearly American but then there's "something up" with it. It's not natural, though it's technically correct.
Odd how that goes.
To be fair, there is a "mild" genteel English accent that is close to American English. It's old fashioned, and her character *is* from an educated family from days of yore.
shareShe's playing a Brit who has lived in the US for what, 50 years? longer? Not only that, but she's been all over the world. You think maybe her accent might be 'authentic' for the character she's playing?
And then she was raised in a British home. She'll have a natural good accent she can turn on or off at will. I found an interview of her talking about the accent somewhere: It was interesting to hear about the deliberate (North) Americanisms she threw into it that I thought were accidental.
shareIt is clear that the accent is fake, as she is trying to do my accent! And failing. As others say, it comes and goes!
She is very lucky to have escaped Essex at the age of 3, kuz the accent would be awful! (Similar to the girls in Birds of a Feather, they are East London cockney, but it isn't far from the Essex accent)
I am sure with time and practice, the accent will drop in.
I understand why she did it; if she used her own accent, it would be hard for us to divorce her from Samantha Carter, having played that character for SO LONG!
Either way, she's one of my favourite actresses ever! Just watching Sanctuary for the first time, missed the 1st 3 episodes unfortunately. Is it me, or is this kind of an American TORCHWOOD?
Is it me, or is this kind of an American TORCHWOOD?
Nothing like it IMO.
First off it's Canadian anyway....
Secondly Torchwood is about aliens and trying to stop the threat of them attacking Earth.Sanctuary is about abnormals,most of which live peacefully in the community or at the Sanctuary itself.
Helen Magnus wants to protect and study the abnormals of the world..not kill them.
She maybe 157 as well but unlike Captain Jack she can die,as evidenced in Requiem.
I fail to see how that is similar myself.
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Canadian Torchwood. This show is made in Vancouver.
sharebpressy she could have picked up the accent from her parents. Just because she moved to canada at a young age does not mean she couldn't have an english accent.
shareI was born in Liverpool and moved before I was two years old, but can sound like a genuine Scouser when needs must or even when I go back to visit. Amanda learned to speak with English accents around her, so her basic 'accent' should be true to her childhood.
shareMy parents were a father who was a Scouser and a mother born here in New Zealand with what's called a "posh New Zealand" accent. Both died when I was young many years ago, but I can adopt their accents when needs must!
La paura uccide la mente
It is a crappy accent and it is not her natural voice - the family moved to Canada when she was three. I've the greatest affection for Amanda but I'm at a loss to understand why she donned a dodgy wig and accent for this show. I have lived all over the UK, including Essex, and I've never encountered anyone who speaks quite like that.
There are a couple who have been close but they had had elocution classes and spoke with what is called Received Pronunciation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation
Actually she isn't wearing a wig in the tv show,that's her natural hair dyed brown.
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NO, NO, NO! I went to H.S. with an English girl, and every year, we'd notice her English accent fading the longer she stayed in the States. Then every summer, she'd go back to England, and return with her English accent in full force again. You know who I thought really had a bad accent was Jim Byrnes, who played Magnus's father. I love and admire him, but, man, his accent wasn't very good. And "Angel" - I thought his Irish accent was supposed to have been "polluted" by living in different countries, and for so long! Did you ever hear Colin Farrell speak with his "real" accent? Or Kevin McKidd? I'm afraid many American viewers just wouldn't be able to understand them. And then, it wouldn't matter how good their acting was!
shareThe problem I had with her accent is that I was so used to her north american accent that I just couldn't buy her english one. or tghe dark hari for that matter either.
shareOkay this goes out to all the UK born-and-raised people...
I asked this in the 2007 Sanctuary board but just realized that was the 07 and not 08 lol... okay...
The show Merlin has an accent.
The show Demons has an accent.
Both are different.
As a North American I can understand Merlin accents better.
...and I have a harder time understanding Demons accents.
What accents are used in both shows?
Why is it easier to understand one than the other? (Weird!) :)
I think she does pretty good with the accent. Or maybe its just not that big a deal to me.
Its kind of like Lucy Lawless and some of the other actors in "Xena: Warrior Princess" trying to do Americanized accents. They did pretty good- but you could hear that New Zealand accent slip through now and then. Didn't bother me in that show- and it doesn't bother me in this one.
Some people probably have a hard time accepting anything different about Amanda Tapping and her SG1 character- Samantha Carter. I personally love the changes-- I think she looks great with dark hair and I love the clothes they put her in! Feminine, but functional. A sort of comfortable elegance. (of course I love her in SG1 too)
Hee I thought I was the only one to notice the crappy American accent in Jekyll, still loved the show and bought the DVD(s) a few weeks ago.
On the topic of fading accents, my father is English and when I was a wee tiny child I picked up his accent, now I don't even hear his accent unless I concentrate on it its just his voice to me. But when I was about 11 and had shed his accent his sister and her fiance came over to visit and his accent got REALLY strong again. That was... 14 years ago and its faded substantially again.
So I can understand an accent that fades and slips after decades in another region. Also I love Jim Byrnes but he seriously needs to not try the accent. If the evil powers that be brought him back from the dead or whatever wouldn't it stand to reason that he would have an American accent like his drunken bum persona?
Duncan MacLeod: You're an a--hole.
Methos: I never said I was deep.
Saw it for the first time the other day and I don't think she does too badly at all, admittedly nowhere near as good as Clare Danes in Stardust, but it is *exceedingly* better than the worst EEEEEEVER, which is a title won, and retained ever since by Mr Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
shareher accent isn't just British.. it's Victorian English.
English vernacular has changed since the 1800's. People would notice an accent from 1990, let alone the greater part of 2 centuries.
I think her accent comes off as poncy (stuck up?) as it does because Americans (yes I know she's English) generally understand that accent a bit more easily. Whereas shows like Demons allow the actors to speak with a bit more of a (forgive the word) twang since it's a british show. Same goes for Hex. At least that's how my girlfriend explains it, her being English and all.
Take Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Anthony Stewart Head (Rupert Giles) in real life has a very thick cockney (london) accent, but in the show uses the upper class, snooty accent to both convey his status as a Watcher and make himself more understandable. When James Marsters (spike) began his role on the show Anthony Head gave him some coaching on how to speak proper cockney so the Americans could understand it.
Didn't Amanda's parents take her to live in Canada when she was a baby ? In which case, I doubt if she regards herself as being English.
As regards Anthony Stewart Head, his real life accent isn't much different from his Giles accent (though I do recall him doing a tv interview a few years ago where, as a joke, he did the whole interview in a strong cockney accent).
"Anthony Head tutored James Marsters in his London accent for Spike. In reality, Head's accent is more like Spike's than the clipped English tones that he sports in the show."
Direct quote from the Trivia section on the BtVS IMDB page.
As for Amanda Tapping she was raised until the age of three in Essex, England. So most of her absorption in early life was in fact english, and her parents being british definitely helped her keep what accent she has throughout life I would assume. That and her subsequent relocation to Essex helped to thicken it up.
My girlfriend has lived in the states with me for almost four years now, every time we take a trip back to her home in Lincolnshire her accent goes back to the way it was, even it is for a week.
I'm British and I think there's nothing wrong with her accent at all. She was supposed to have been born in the 1800s and a lady from England in those days would have spoken very properly like she does, so it's fine as far as I'm concerned.
But I have to comment on this comment that someone made earlier:
***(quote) Please, can I just say because it drives me up the wall every time I hear the expression, there is no such thing as a BRITISH ACCENT. Britain is made up of numerous countries. You can have a Scottish, Welsh or English accent but not a British one. Thanks, rant over. (quote)***
I used to think that, but that's quite a British way of thinking. I've lived abroad for quite a few years now and speaking to people from other countries there actually IS a 'British accent' as far as they're concerned - they can spot one fairly easily. They might not be able to tell who's from Scotland or Wales or England, but the accent to other nationalities does sound a certain way to make them realise that the person is from the UK somewhere.
People from the UK get all uppity about there not being a British accent, but they're quite happy to say that someone speaks with an Australian accent when that person is actually from New Zealand and an American accent when that person is from Canada, and I'm sure that people who live in Alaska and Hawaii speak differently from those who live in Florida. Likewise, those in Tasmania and Perth speak differently from people from Sydney - so if us Brits are going to lump other people together as having one kind of accent, then I think we have no business getting upset when people say someone has a British accent - all they mean is that they sound like they're from the UK, and it isn't meant to offend.
So that's my rant over!!!!
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"but they're quite happy to say that someone speaks with an Australian accent when that person is actually from New Zealand and an American accent when that person is from Canada"
I live in New Zealand and has an English father. In my experience, it's not a matter of British people mis-identifying accents, but the reverse! New Zealanders by and large have a "tin ear" and they're the ones who hear New Zealanders as Australian, Canadians as Americans... and not so long ago, a New Zealand couple decided I was South African because of my residual parental accent... which was just crazy-making! (New Zealand is culturally American, and the tin ear doesn't apply to American accents, the only ones that are taught in NZ drama schools...
La paura uccide la mente
I kinda thought her accent has a twang of New Zelander, haha.
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Ok, first, since she moved to Canada from England, she will always have had some form of English accent, even if it was only the once she picked up from her parents (and probably used to joke them, we've all done it).
Secondly, the script uses too many Amercianisms ('Fall' is a verb, not a season, it's autumn, people!), which doesn't help with accent maintenence.
Finally, as plenty of other people have said, if you live somewhere for a long time (and by long time I mean about 10 or more years, so she has lived in wherever-it-is for a long time) you do start to pick up a slight accent.
And it's not actually a bad accent. It's more in the way of Recieved Pronunciation, but it's definitely one of the better British character accents I've heard.
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