Losing An Accent On Screen
Nov 26th, 2008 by Alan Yu
I personally watch the show Heroes and one thing that I have noticed that is a bit odd is the actor James Kyson Lee who plays the character “Ando” that is supposed to be Japanese. Now apparently from what I read he is actually Korean and had no real skill in the Japanese language. So obviously, he has to fake the accent when he is saying his lines.
What I noticed recently though is that from time to time when his character talks in English he would have the accent and sometimes he wouldn’t. Maybe I’m just a bit more picky, but those little hitches seem so huge to me in making the character very unbelievable afterwards.
I think Hugh Laurie, in the show House, is an example of really good consistent acting when it comes to accents as you can’t even tell that he normally speaks with a British accent. I think the most difficult and overlooked thing when it comes to accents is that sometimes we tend to try and copy the sound as oppose to understanding why they talk the way they do.
For example with Japanese, I have a little bit of knowledge and I know that there are no letter “L’s” or “V’s” in the language which is why you hear Japanese people speak the way they do when it comes to English words. I’m actually surprised that the director didn’t pick up on those hitches too.
I think as actors we are more attuned to things many people don’t notice. Any actor that does accents pick them part in media… I know I do, at least
On an odd note, there are people in real life that waiver between good accent and bad accent days… or even moments. I know personally from speaking Spanish, some days I get it right and some days I don’t. My R’s roll good sometimes and when I don’t concentrate enough they don’t…
In movies/tv it does look sloppy though… unless this was pointed out as a character trait, we assume characters aren’t so complex. Just odd that things that do happen in real life can seem ham-handed in the synthesized version of life on tv/theaters.