“There is a part of the world that is not familiar with what it takes to transform your voice, whether it is singing, adopting a dialect for a role or to voice a specific character.” With these words, the singer Ariana Grande was blunt a few weeks ago with those who criticized the changes in her voice. It all started when last summer, during an interview in podcast by actor Penn Badgley, podcrushed, The artist showed another tone of voice that did not go unnoticed on social networks, where the smallest matter is susceptible to magnification. This modification in her voice, as she herself has explained, is a consequence of her preparation for the role of Glinda, the good witch of the south, a character she plays in the long-awaited film adaptation of the musical. Wickedstill without a confirmed release date.
“Actors use their voices and accents as a way to maintain the imaginary circumstances of the character they play in the context of the story,” says Scott Cleverdon, who, in addition to being an actor and screenwriter, is coach interpretation and accents. “The process begins by simply listening to and imitating the desired voice,” he points out about this phase of prior preparation for certain roles. “Some people can pick up these accents quickly or even do it without thinking. Ariana Grande, for example, is an incredible imitator with her singing voice. Because? Because singers start by imitating other singers,” says the expert.
She has not been the first to give explanations after showing a sudden change in her way of speaking. Last year, one of the talks of film awards season was Austin Butler’s accent. After three years in the shoes of Elvis Presley for the box office biopic directed by Baz Luhrmann, the performer ended up adopting the marked accent of the king of rock and roll. During the intense promotion of the film and in his race towards the Oscar (he was nominated for best actor), the journalists who interviewed him were perplexed to see that Butler continued speaking as if he were Elvis. His coach vocal for the film explained in an interview with the news portal Vox that the vocal classes lasted for nine months, for three or four hours, five days a week. That exhaustive dedication ended up making the actor “forget” his real voice.
Isabel Pastor is coach of accent and Professor of Voice and Language at the Royal School of Dramatic Art (RESAD), and says that in her years of experience she has worked with actresses and actors who, during the process of practicing a character’s accent, have had difficulties to return to his usual accent. Although he clarifies: “In no case was the character’s accent maintained much beyond the time of filming.” To get rid of Presley’s accent, Butler said on television that he needed a dialect expert to be able to continue playing other characters. His case was very notable due to the striking nature of the change and the popularity of the film, but it is not an isolated phenomenon. As Pastor relates, there have been cases in which he has had to work to recover his own voice and speech. “We have used previous recordings of the actor or actress so that, through observation and imitation, they could recover their usual voice and speech,” he explains.
In the context of Hollywood, it is very common for British or Australian actors to develop a good part of their career without using their original voice. This was reported a few days ago by Andrew Garfield, who, although born in Los Angeles, spent his childhood and youth in England. “I think it was the first time I used my real voice (in a movie),” he said. at a press screening of his new film, Live in the moment. The same thing happened to her co-star, Florence Pugh, so used to putting on an American accent in her work that when she uses her original Oxford accent the audience believes it is fictitious: “It’s the second film in which I show my own voice.” , he revealed in the same promotion. “A lot of people think I’m American. When I do other things in public, like presenting an award or going on stage, they say, ‘That’s the fakest British accent I’ve ever heard,'” he joked.
When talking about accents, we must not forget the social connotations they contain (they greatly influence how an individual is perceived), which is why many actors living in the United States who belong to minorities, such as Colombian Sofía Vergara —who already made it clear in your visit to The Anthill how little he likes that they laughed at his accent—or the Pakistani comedian Kumail Ali Nanjiani, have publicly denounced how they have received comments to modify their accent when it comes to getting a role. A practice as old as Hollywood itself, since Ava Gardner was already urged to eliminate her southern North Carolina accent.
Who has also not been spared from having his accent become news is Harry Styles. In 2022, just when the singer released the album Harry’s House and he became the most followed artist of the moment, fans detected a different tone in his voice, closer to the American accent than to that of his native Cheshire. And it wasn’t the first time. At the 2021 Brit Awards, Watermelon Sugar. “I didn’t know that Harry Styles was American”, “What happened to Harry Styles’ accent?” they asked on the social network.
This changing accent of Styles, whose life takes place between the United States and England, is likely the result of what the director of the Voice Institute, logophoniatrician Judith Wuhl, defines as “phonological convergence.” This term has to do with copying or imitating an accent, voluntarily or involuntarily. “I will start from the most basic: the involuntary. There is, at the level of neurological circuits, a direct connection between the nerve that innervates the ear and that of the larynx. What we hear we try to reproduce, in an automatic way. This is how a child acquires the mother tongue, the language of his community,” says Alba Llanos, speech therapist specialized in voice, accent reduction and pronunciation in I am a speech therapist. When you blend in with another accent, “you begin to imitate the rhythm, intonation, and sounds of that way of speaking, often without realizing it. The ease with which an accent is contagious varies from person to person. There are people who have a great capacity to adopt accents different from their own due to living in a specific city or even due to the influence of their partner, while other people are not so sensitive to these aspects,” he adds.
Accents aside, another vocal change that obsessed the world a few years ago was that of Elizabeth Holmes. The founder of Theranos, currently in prison accused of fraud, had a characteristic deep, gravelly voice that turned out to be fake. The one who was the great promise of Silicon Valley had a different tone of voice when speaking in public or when he was in more relaxed environments (some people close to him even commented that Holmes sometimes “forgot” to use his deep voice). What kind of person fakes their voice? he was wondering The Cut in an article about it in 2019. In the text they described Holmes’ voice as “deep baritone”, a deep tone different from his original voice, which was somewhat higher. In 2023, the businesswoman, who now calls herself Liz Holmes, no longer used that deep voice when speaking, according to a reporter who interviewed her for The New York Times. Just as he used the black turtleneck sweater as an unofficial uniform for his public events, it is possible that Holmes faked that deep voice to project a certain image and reinforce his authority in Silicon Valley, as speculated by the American press, where they were published dozens of articles on the subject.
“There are studies that show that vocal characteristics influence the initial impressions we form about others,” emphasizes Llanos. And he points out: “People who speak in deep tones and slowly are usually perceived as more authoritarian and confident. On the contrary, people with high-pitched voices and who speak at a higher speed tend to transmit more energy, but they may also show signs of nervousness, which sometimes reduces their authority.” In this sense, your consultation is attended by “people who want to train their voice to adjust to social conventions related to their gender, their job position or the sensations they wish to convey.” Without a doubt, the tone of voice and accent of each one can give a lot to talk about.
