Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Accents mastered updated

I was thinking about what actual accent Meryl employs for her characterization of Aunt March in Little Women. A lot of people probably assume everyone is just doing a general American accent (considering all the March sisters were portrayed by non-Americans). But we know Meryl doesn't normally sound like that.

It's not specifically what we'd think of as a Boston accent, but I'm going to go with "Northeastern New England."  It seems to fit the description on Wikipedia, at least in regard some of the geography. Let me know if you think there is a better term!

The updated list is as follows:

The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)--Tennessean
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)--British (specifically Received Pronunciation)
Sophie's Choice (1982)--Polish (in English and German)
Silkwood (1983)--Texan
Plenty (1985)--British (I think it's also RP)
Out of Africa (1985)--Danish
Ironweed (1987)--Irish-American
A Cry in the Dark (1988)--New Zealand (with strong layers of Australian)
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)--Italian (Meryl calls it Iowatalian)
Dancing at Lughnasa (1998)--Northern Irish
Angels in America (2003)--Yiddish and Bronx (in separate roles)
Prime (2005)--Manhattan (specifically Upper West Side)
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)--Upper Midwestern
Doubt (2008)--Bronx
Julie & Julia (2009)--Boston Brahmin
The Iron Lady (2011)--British (again RP)
August: Osage County (2013)--Oklahoman
The Homesman (2014)--Central Plains Midwestern
Suffragette (2015)--British (Received Pronunciation)
Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)--Mid-Atlantic
Mary Poppins Returns (2018)--vaguely Russian
The Laundromat (2019)--nondescript Latin (possibly Panamanian Spanish)
Little Women (2019)--Northeastern New England


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