Ron Stallworth here.

Messages.

Hear me.

My murderous son. My murderous son.

Like to make an impression, darling.

Hi, my name is Erik Singer and I'm back.

[dinging]

[Announcer] Erik is still spending his days

being a dialect coach for film and television.

Let's talk about some more idiolects.

What's an idiolect?

An idiolect is one individual person's way of speaking.

So, let's look at some more actors playing real people.

Rami Malek.

Freddie Mercury.

We're four misfits, who don't belong together,

playing to the other misfits.

The outcasts, right at the back of the room,

who are pretty sure they don't belong either.

We belong to them.

Well, this is amazing.

This performance deserves every plaudit that it got.

Thank you.

Let's talk about a couple specific speech things.

First of all, I don't think I've ever talked

in one of these videos about prosthetics.

But, of course, prosthetics are incredibly common,

especially when actors are playing real people.

I've got to make an impression, darling.

You look like an angry lizard.

You can change the look and shape of the face

with prosthetics and, of course, that's going

to affect the way the actor speaks.

Well done, Columbo.

In this case, it's hard to imagine playing

Freddie Mercury without those teeth.

Yes, of course.

Whereas it takes time to get used to something

like having prosthetics in your mouth.

Something interesting about the way he does adapt to this.

There's that very immobiles upper lip.

You can see that in Mercury here.

I didn't really think we were going to last that long,

but you never think about it.

And here's Malek.

I'm going to be what I was born to be,

a performer.

Let's talk about one more little detail,

which is Freddie Mercury's S sound.

An S sound is a sibilant sound.

Mercury's S is a hyper-sibilant sound,

which means it's higher pitched.

People want to be entertained in various ways.

Various ways.

The way you get that is by moving the tip of the tongue,

if that's the part of the tongue you're using

to make the S sound, closer to the teeth.

The lights.

The lights, ts, ts, ts.

And what's interesting here is that those teeth

are further forward than they might be in somebody else.

Mercury.

Easy to say that I'm a big star, star, star.

Malek.

And we'll punch a hole in the sky, sky.

Wow.

Claire Foy.

Queen Elizabeth the Second.

Twenty-five years ago.

Twenty-five years ago.

My grandfather broadcast the first.

My grandfather broadcast the first of these

Christmas messages. These Christmas messages.

So, Claire Foy's accent here is clearly

a kind of antique RP.

RP is received pronunciation.

It's that accent we associate with the British upper classes

and upper-middle classes.

Queen Elizabeth the Second has a very heightened RP accent.

Here's Her Majesty the Queen.

I very much hope that this new medium will make

my Christmas message more personal and direct.

I think if Claire Foy had gone for that accent precisely,

it might have been too much.

Here's Claire Foy's version.

I very much hope that this new medium

will make my Christmas message more personal

and direct.

So, she's catching the spirit of it.

She's doing a lot of the vowel sounds most of the way.

More personal.

More personal.

Personal.

Personal.

But not all the way.

I think that's a great choice here.

Hope. Hope.

Hope. Hope.

I talk a lot about oral posture, which is the shape

and feel of an accent.

It's kind of the logic that holds the individual sounds

together because the individual sounds arise

out of that oral posture.

The oral posture for this accent is very high.

The jaw is high, the tongue tends to be a little bit tenser

in the mouth, and so we get some sounds that are

a little bit higher, a little bit tenser,

in terms of the tongue position in the mouth.

You can hear that in the pronunciation of the trap vowel

in the word happy.

Happy, happy Christmas.

Here's the Queen pronouncing a similar vowel sound

with that raised position.

Happy Christmas.

Happy Christmas.

Another example of this connection

between this oral posture and sounds

is in the goat vowel.

You can hear it here in the word remote.

I should seem rather remote, remote.

And here's Her Majesty the Queen.

Rather remote figure to many of you.

Rather remote figure to many of you.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Edward Snowden.

Well, they'll charge me under the Espionage Act

and they'll say I endangered National Security

and they'll demonize me and my friends and family

and they'll throw me in jail.

It's so cool, he's doing so much.

So, Edward Snowden has a really particular

and interesting vocal quality,

some of which comes from actually pushing down

on his larynx.

He's physically lowering it.

I have a really prominent Adam's apple,

you can probably see it.

So here's the real Edward Snowden.

My name is Edward Snowden.

And here's Joseph Gordon-Leavitt.

My name is Edward Joseph Snowden.

There's a very characteristic thing that Snowden does

with what we call a high fall,

it's got a shape like that.

In terms of the pitch contour you can hear it here

in the word passport.

Passport.

Here's Joseph Gordon-Leavitt.

America was founded on.

Passport.

Founded on.

Passport.

Trap me. Trap me.

Computers. Computers.

And here's Joseph Gordon-Leavitt on in the world.

Everyone in the world, in the world.

And really wrong.

Really wrong, really wrong.

Even when it's not exactly the same amplitude,

it's still the same shape.

Computers.

Really wrong.

Trap me.

Security.

O'Shea Jackson Jr.

Ice Cube.

I got a baby on the way

in the house I just paid for off the strength

of what you told me!

I mean, you gave me your word!

I'm going to talk about a particular feature of English

called T-H fronting.

T-H sounds are most of the time made on the teeth,

tip of the tongue either behind the upper front teeth

or in between.

[T-H sounds]

When those sounds are realized as more of an F or V sound,

so with the lip in the teeth.

[humming sound]

So, this, those.

Or mouth, ruthless.

We call that T-H fronting,

because it's a little further forward.

So, Ice Cube demonstrates T-H fronting here

in the word ruthless.

And the ruthless posse, the ruth, the ruth.

And in this rap he demonstrates the same thing

in ruthless and in toothless.

Right, left, you toothless, tooth, tooth,

damn they ruthless, ruth, ruth.

Here's O-Shea Jackson, Jr., Ice Cube's real son,

doing the same thing in this rap on one of those two words,

but not on the other one.

Right, left, you toothless, tooth, tooth.

Goddamn they ruthless, ruth, ruth, ruth.

So, Ice Cube is his actual dad.

Apparently he had a lot of input into the performance

in all kinds of ways, so I think that's cool.

Are we finished here?

Gary Oldman.

Winston Churchill.

We shall fight on the landing grounds,

we shall fight in the fields,

and in the streets.

This is an extraordinary performance.

Churchill's S sound was kind of the opposite, in a sense,

from Freddie Mercury's S sound.

Various ways, ways, s, s, s,.

Harkens, s, s.

It's not hyper-sibilant,

it's hypo-sibilant, so it's lower pitched

and the way that happens mechanically

is that the part of the tongue that's making that S sound

is a little bit further away from the teeth

instead of being closer to it.

Further away you get,

the lower the pitch is.

Exertions, s, s, s, s.

You can try that yourself.

Move the part of your tongue that makes your S,

tongue tip up, tongue tip down, closer to your teeth

and then further away.

[hissing sound]

You can hear the pitch raise and lower as you do that.

So Churchill's was pretty far away,

which gives it a lower pitched S than Freddie Mercury's

higher pitched one.

So here's Rami Malek's hyper-sibilant S.

Punch a hole in the sky, sky.

And here's Oldman's hypo-sibilant one.

We shall never surrender, surrender!

Sky.

Surrender!

[S sounds]

There's yet another detail of the way he's making

this single sound,

which is that Oldman is doing it with his tongue tip down,

so that the groove for the air stream is

in that part of the tongue right behind the tip

and Churchill did exactly the same thing,

and we can hear that.

We shall never surrender!

We shall never surrender!

Surrender!

Surrender.

Listen to Churchill's boats and comrades.

[Churchill] Their U-Boats.

Like good comrades.

Seas and oceans.

[Churchill] We shall fight on the seas and oceans.

And here's Oldman.

On the seas and oceans.

Comrades.

[Churchill] Comrades.

Jennifer Lawrence.

Joy Mangano.

It's light-weight.

It's the only mop that you're ever going to buy,

the best mop you're ever going to use,

it is lightweight and durable,

and that is just me speaking from my experience.

So I think this is a great example of that middle road,

more subtle route in playing a real person

without going for some kind of uncanny,

oh my god, that's the person's voice.

Hi, I'm Joy Mangano

and I invented the Miracle Mop.

This is the only mop that you're ever going to buy.

This is literally the last mop you'll ever have to buy.

So this is a really recognizable Long Island accent.

It's marked by a bunch of things.

One of those things is nasality

and the way you do that, or what I mean by that,

there's an opening at the very back of your vocal tract

called the velopharyngeal port.

It's the opening between the velum, which is the back

of the roof of the mouth,

and the pharynx, which is the back wall of the throat.

You can open that so air can escape through the nose,

and that's what we get, is nasality, if you go ah.

You can close it and no air gets out through the nose,

which is what you have to do when you make a sound like buh,

otherwise there would be no buildup of that air pressure.

And if it's closed,

we don't have a lot of nasality in the voice.

What she's done is she's opened it a bit.

Less so than the real Joy's.

Well, you know it's 300 feet of continuous loop cotton.

Continuous cotton loops.

Continuous loop cotton.

But definitely more than her own natural voice.

I hope so.

And I never care.

I was with my two kids, with my father.

Care. Father.

Care.

Thank you.

Thank you.

There's an intersection here between that nasality

and particular sounds like the sound in the word hand.

It gets a little bit tenser.

I would get glass shards in my hands, hands.

The way she says the word durable here is just,

it's just pure Long Island.

So it's lightweight, but very durable, durable.

Cameron Britton.

Ed Kemper.

I knew a week before she died I was going to kill her.

I knew a week before she died, I was going to kill her.

She said for seven years.

For seven years, she said.

I haven't had sex with a man.

I haven't had sex with a man.

Because of you my murderous son.

My murderous son.

Okay, so, I think this one is really interesting.

He's not doing absolutely everything.

He's doing some things very specifically,

and yet the effect is uncanny,

so much that it just feels like he caught the guy's soul.

She says, well I suppose you're gonna want to wait up

all night and talk now. Sit up all night

and talk now.

So, a couple of really specific things.

Ed Kemper's top lip barely moves

and it's really only the middle thirds of the lips

on the top and the bottom that are active.

They hardly ever come into full rounding.

Here's Britton.

I wasn't impotent, but emotionally I was.

Here's Kemper.

I wasn't impotent, but emotionally I was impotent.

He's doing some really interesting stuff

with the pacing, too.

So, different from the real Cameron Britton,

who we can see here.

Once we were done shooting,

I expected the character to leave, but he didn't want to.

And here's this very slow, deliberate pace

with these very carefully chosen words.

She had a very violently outspoken position on men.

And here's Kemper again.

And had very strong and violently outspoken

position on men.

Okay.

[shivering and sighing]

John David Washington.

Ron Stallworth.

Looky here, some people say we've got a lot of malice,

some say it's a lot of nerve.

I'm going to talk about something, kind of basic,

but here's a term.

The term is rhoticity.

We can talk about accents being rhotic or non-rhotic.

Can you give me an example?

Rhotic means we pronounce the R after vowel sounds,

where it's like car, hear, fear.

Non-rhotic accent would not pronounce those Rs.

Yeah, there, car, something like that.

And Ron Stallworth is very consistently

and obviously rhotic speaker.

We always hear those Rs after vowels.

I launched a investigation into the Ku Klux Klan,

a Chapter that was forming.

Chapter, chapter.

So, Washington is doing that for sure.

Deescalate, talk calmly, firmly.

He's also doing something else interesting though,

which is when he's on the phones with the Ku Klux Klan,

he's bumping up the rhoticity.

National Director, too, huh?

Director, too.

No, sir, sir.

What I mean by that is something very specific

and physical.

This weird articulation that is an American R involves

the sides of the tongue coming up

and touching the upper molars and the bicuspids on the sides

and sometimes pressing out against them,

bracing muscularly against the insides of those teeth.

Ron Stallworth here.

And that's what we kind of hear is like a harder R.

Pure, Walter!

Now the real Ron Stallworth has said

that he didn't actually do that,

he did not change his voice on the phones.

He used his own accent.

That's when I said, Oh hell, what do I do now?

JD Washington does make that little adjustment

and I think it's fascinating.

All right, are you absolutely sure?

He doesn't do it in an obvious way,

I think that would have had a different effect.

I kind of love the way this works though

in helping to tell the story of this film.

I can tell you're pure Aryan, white man

from the way you pronounce certain words.

John Cusack.

Richard Nixon.

But do you really want that spoiled, rich, son-of-a-bitch

to be your next President?

That isn't for me to say.

Could be disastrous.

That's exactly what's going to happen.

So, I think there's a few ways of approaching this.

One of them, of course, is, we can all think of performances

where somebody has gone for a really uncanny,

almost eerie evocation of a real person.

We see at the other end of the spectrum,

I think, sometimes people will play a real person

and decide not to do anything to go for that person.

That can be an entirely, artistically valid choice,

I think.

It all depends on what the story is

and how you're serving the story.

There's kind of an in between approach, too, I think,

which is to kind of pick a few features

and sort of, you're lightly evoking the character.

And I think that's what Cusack is doing here.

I did.

I think he's very far away in his own natural voice

from Nixon's voice and vocal quality.

Well, I like doing voiceovers

because they're so easy.

I have sat in the National Security Council.

Tell your people to vote for me.

I have been in the cabinet.

Fun, easy thing to do as an actor.

That looks like a tasty treat.

Sometimes it is not.

Yes, it is easy.

Got my word on that.

So I think that's probably a wise choice in this case.

He's pinning most of this, I think,

on rhythm and that kind of grumbly, drawn-out last syllable

and I think it's effective for the story.

Thank you, Cecil.

All right, let's look at another Nixon now.

This is about that Watergate nonsense.

Well, I'm not a crook.

I've earned everything I've got.

I've nothing to do with it, okay?

So I think there's kind of a standard model Nixon.

We've seen a lot of Nixons.

Things like this.

The CIA has no policy, except what I dictate to you.

And this one.

If you really want to get inside Dick Nixon's head,

you have to use a proctoscope.

One of the things that I think a lot of these include

is this very characteristic oral posture,

which has to do often with sort of the lengthening

of the tube that is the vocal tract,

in part by tensing cheeks in

and sort of squishing the lips forwards

with a lot of relaxation in the middle thirds

of the upper and lower lips.

Well let me tell you something!

I have never profited.

They're the liars here, you know.

I welcome this kind of examination.

It won't protect them from me.

The other thing he does though

that's a little bit subtler is,

there's a little bit of what we call pharyngeal squeeze,

which is a kind of tension or squeezing, narrowing

in the throat, back, sort of behind the various parts

of the tongue and mouth.

And he does that especially on R sounds after vowels.

You can hear it here in 24, for instance.

At the age of 24, 24.

So, here's Nixon doing it

in the words require and quitter.

Will require.

A quitter.

The age of 24.

That's a really neat and fine detail, I think.

They trust me.

And one more Nixon, here's Frank Langella.

You got to do a lot of things sometimes

that are not always in the stricter sense of the law

legal.

So I think there's another way to play a real person

that I didn't mention,

which is to sort of heighten everything.

Let me just stop you.

Let me just stop you right there.

Right there. Right there.

We usually see this in comedy impressions.

This is not, obviously.

This is a really serious performance

and I think a brilliant one,

but it is interesting to notice the way he's taken

each feature, each of these characteristic things,

and just heightened it slightly.

Sort of turned the dial up to 11.

When the President does it that means it's not illegal.

Well, when the President does it

that means that it is not illegal.

Let's just look at Langella's lip corners here.

And compare them to the real Nixon's.

I had nothing to,

no knowledge of the fact

that it was going to be paid.

So all of these features are there,

but in the real Nixon, maybe slightly more subdued.

I have to carry that burden with me

for the rest of my life.

For the rest of my life.

I let the American people down.

I let the American people down.

My political life is over.

My political life is over.

Felicity Jones.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

100 years ago Myra Bradwell wanted to be a lawyer.

She had fulfilled the requirements for the Illinois Bar,

but she wasn't allowed to practice because she was a woman.

There's so much that is wonderful in this performance.

I am going to be picky here and just pick one thing out.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's native Brooklyn accent

is consistently non-rhotic.

Use the word gender.

To become a father.

With a partner.

And Felicity Jones does a great job of that right here.

Myra Bradwell wanted to be a lawyer, a lawyer.

But moments later she has a very rhotic pronunciation

of the word Bar.

Fulfilled the requirements for the Illinois Bar.

We wouldn't expect to find that in a non-rhotic speaker.

I'm asking you to set a new precedent.

Claire Danes.

Temple Grandin.

I could see the world in a new way.

I could see details that other people were blind to.

Everyone worked hard to make sure that I was engaged.

I think this is wonderful.

It's a fascinating performance.

There's so many details.

I could see details.

Physically, eye movement,

and certainly, certainly speech-wise.

Autism's a neurological disorder.

I'm autistic.

Today Einstein would be diagnosed with some kind

of autism.

Well, I didn't speak until I was four.

No speech until age three.

Just to zero in on one thing,

which is she's changed the direction,

the orientation of her tongue tip when she makes

T-D-N-S and some L sounds.

Claire Danes normally makes this sounds

with her tongue tip towards her alveolar ridge

that gum ridge behind the teeth.

Thank you so much, Mateen, Mateen.

Whereas Temple Grandin used the blade of her tongue,

which is the bit of the tongue right behind the tip,

so the tongue tip is oriented down and it is the blade

of her tongue that's making contact

or getting close to that alveolar ridge.

You can hear that here.

To entertain a kid one time, time, time.

Teen, teen.

Time.

And Claire Danes has adopted that completely.

Kind of a hard thing to change, that takes a while.

Blind to, to.

Time, time.

To. Time.

To.

Amazing details.

Adrien Brody.

Salvador Dali.

I paint you.

Your sad eyes

and big lips melting

over the hot sand

with one tear.

So that's ridiculous, right?

I mean, completely over the top.

Here's the real guy.

[animated speaking]

[Announcer] They do it in the ordinary way.

[animated speaking and pounding]

So he is, too.

He was immensely theatrical.

Very good, very good.

Yes.

So what do you do with that?

Do you tone it down,

because it's going to seem like too much?

Yes.

I think it depends. Yes.

In Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson travels back in time

and meets all his heroes and they're all larger than life,

so I think this fits in with that.

Salvador Dali in real life was kind of larger than life.

On rhinoceros.

The rhinoceros.

So of course he is in the film and it serves the story.

Very good, very good.

So we talked before about Winston Churchill's tapped R,

there's another kind of R that makes contact

with that gummed ridge and that's a trilled R,

so in this case it's going to make contact a few times.

Rhinoceros, rhi, rhi, rhinoceros.

Spanish has both kinds of R.

The tapped R is spelled with a single R

and the trilled R conveniently is spelled

with a double R,

so you can make a distinction between a word

like pero and perro.

Dali does a trilled R here.

Tremendous, tremendous.

And Adrien Brody, in very theatrical seeming fashion,

because it's really theatrical to trill an R in English,

but Dali did it.

Here's Brody.

Suspender, ender, ender.

Christian Bale.

Dick Cheney.

I think you cannot be blown off course.

I think you cannot be blown off course.

So Bale has actually said he wasn't going for

an impression of Cheney.

I guess an uncanny evocation of the guy.

Focusing on what's the essence, you know,

not wanting to do just an impersonation.

But there's so many fine

and accurately observed details here.

Physical things, that sort of tilt of the head,

the way the head alternately sort of nods side-to-side

and comes forward in a nod for emphasis.

Things like his vocal quality, as well,

and of course that lip that's raised up on one side

into a kind of sneer.

[sighing]

Here's something really fun.

Look at the way the lips spread quite wide

together with that head nod for emphasis.

Here in Bale's performance on the word that.

You got to deal with that.

And on the same vowel sound in Cheney

in the word asked.

And asked them if we thought.

And asked. And asked.

And asked. And asked.

Michelle Yeoh.

Aung San Suu Kyi.

Have you heard anything yet?

Quickly, before they cut the line.

I think one could sort out a lot of problems.

Is there any sign at all that they will let you come?

I'm very much in favor of negotiations.

Okay, so there's something here

that's really a high wire act.

Michelle Yeoh delivered Aung San Suu Kyi's speeches

in Burmese, a language she doesn't speak.

[speaking in Burmese]

That's kind of amazing.

I'm not sure her Burmese is perfect.

Some Burmese speakers say it's a little weird,

nevertheless an incredibly impressive thing

to have attempted.

Thank you.

Her accent in English is a little bit inconsistent

and I think this is one of those cases

where the actor really would have needed

an enormous amount of support and a lot of time.

I'd say six months to prepare for something like this

when you include those Burmese speeches.

Here we have her sounding mostly like Michelle Yeoh.

Quickly, before they cut the line.

It's really from 88 until 90.

We will continue in a calm and orderly fashion.

Whereas here we have here really nailing

Aung San Suu Kyi's very, hyper-educated,

Oxbridge English accent.

Is there any sign at all, at all?

They all have a stake.

At all, at all.

They all have a stake in the future of this country.

I've never actually spoken in public before.

Anyway, if she didn't have the proper support

and time, which I really doubt she did,

did this all on her own, still a really impressive job.

Thank you.

Carmen Ejogo.

Coretta Scott King.

What do you intend to say these people then, sir?

Lot of work has been done here,

and I don't intend to see it undone tonight.

Let's go down a rabbit hole.

Coretta Scott King has two very different pronounciations

of the word her.

Really close to each other in this interview.

Let's listen to them.

I also said to her, you are so brave.

I didn't see her.

So, they're inconsistent.

That's the person.

She's a real person

and she's got two different pronunciations.

Very different.

Said her. See her.

Said to her. See her.

Listen to Carmen Ejogo's two different pronunciations

of the final syllable in the word minister

and in the word sir.

One is rhotic, with an R, and one is non-rhotic.

Just a vowel sound.

What do you intend to say to these people then, sir?

You've said disrespectful things in the past, minister.

That's inconsistent, but it's inconsistent in a way

that people actually are in their own accents.

That's important and interesting to note

that real people have that kind of inconsistency.

[dinging]

Conclusion.

Speech is about the most physically complex thing we do

as human beings.

So what we need for that?

Time and really good support.

Really good coach.

Actors don't always get that.

So I think those are things that we always need

to keep in mind with these performances,

but, wow, this is fascinating, fascinating stuff.

I think we can all agree.

[clapping]

[string music]