Bill Clinton. ♫ Those who are.

Gettysburg. The heart.

No offense meant.

Just look at the kid to carry the fight.

Hi, I'm Erik Singer.

[Narrator] Erik is still a dialect coach

who cannot stop talking about linguistics.

Today we're gonna look at some idiolects.

An idiolect is one individual person's way of speaking

so we're gonna look at some actors playing real people.

Let's look at some clips.

Jamie Foxx, Ray Charles.

Making a record is business

and finding the best business deal that you can.

Now, can you match it?

So, there's a posture thing here that's interesting.

Ray Charles smiles a lot.

I know, I know.

His lip corners tend to kind of pull

straight back towards his ears

even when he's not smiling

and it kind of hangs on throughout at least a little bit.

Yeah, you didn't know that, did you?

Jamie Foxx is doing this.

Owning my own masters is a pretty damn good deal.

You know, and he's not just doing this.

He's not just doing it perfectly.

It's so integrated.

Is it?

It's in him, he's living through it.

Oh! Yeah!

No, no, no, no.

It's great.

I'm very proud of the work that we've done here together.

I loved it, I really did.

Natalie Portman, Jackie Kennedy.

She bought a lot of furniture for this house.

We took the Lincoln furniture

that had been all over the house.

Which made her husband rather cross.

So, she went really far with this

going for a really accurate evocation

of a very particular voice.

[Natalie] It was where we lived when we first came here.

[Jackie] It was where we lived when we first came here.

It sounds strange to us now

and audiences responded to it that way.

It's a huge risk.

I think it really pays off.

[Both] And on the table is the Gettysburg Address.

There's incredible care with some of the details here.

Listen to the tiny little sort of catch breath

right after the word most here.

Yes, they are.

The most famous one, of course.

Here's Jackie.

Yes, they are.

The most famous one, of course.

One more thing in that line.

You can hear a very particular kind

of characteristic inflection sort of movement of pitch.

Right at the end of the sentence when she says bed.

Is the Lincoln bed.

Kinda goes (hums). Bed.

It's a little plateau and then a fall.

Natalie Portman has that kind of inflection possibility.

She doesn't use it in the exact same place in this line.

Lincoln bed. (voice echoes)

Lincoln bed. (voice echoes)

She does use it just a little bit earlier

on the word are.

Yes they are. (voice echoes)

Yes they are. (voice echoes)

See, that's pretty cool.

That's when you have an accent in you, it just comes out.

Forest Whitaker, Idi Amin.

Me be Idi Amin Dada, and I want to promise you

this will be a government of action!

Forest Whitaker prepped for a long time

to get Idi Amin's Ugandan English and it's really good.

What will be the future of Uganda?

It will be like this in Uganda now.

The people are looking at this.

Just to pick two details out,

that vowel sound in a word like first.

I never eat the food until my soldiers have eaten first.

Where it moves all the way forward in the mouth

with a kind of a cupped tongue so you get first.

First. (voice echoes)

He's perfect on that.

Okay, so it's a great little thing that he's doing too

which is absolutely accurate

which is he puts an extra little vowel sound in

in a couple of places.

This has a fancy name, it's called epenthesis.

It's pretty familiar if you think of

a kind of stereotypical Italian accent.

[Both] It's-a me, Mario!

It's-a me.

And you can hear it here.

I am a simple man, like you.

And here.

We make this country better.

Jamal Woolard, the Notorious B.I.G.

♫ It was all a dream.

♫ I used to read Word Up magazine.

[Both] ♫ Remember rapping Duke, duh-ha, duh-ha

Every Saturday Rap Attack, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl.

So Willard is from the same part of Brooklyn

that Biggie was and that helps, a lot,

but he worked really hard to get this down

and for the most part he does a really amazing job.

♫ I got it going on.

Especially considering he had to rap like Biggie

as well as speak like him.

♫ Jewels is all that.

♫ Clothes is all that.

[Both] ♫ Chumps steppin' to me.

♫ That's where they took a fall at!

If I were gonna quibble, I'd say.

What if I don't make it?

He uses a little bit too much muscularity and detail

especially in his speech as opposed to his rapping.

I'll tell him your ass stopped talkin' shit.

Here's Biggie.

I am alive, at one point the music was more important.

There's kind of an ease, a flow, a slowness almost

in a lot of the articulation.

It's a lot easier that way.

Willard really uses his lips a lot to make sounds.

Now, D-Roc, my gun my big.

And Biggie's lower lip mostly remains kind of down.

It's all good though.

And even out a little.

I ain't trippin'.

But half of Americans make their S sounds

with their tongue tip down and about half

make their S sounds with their tongue tip up.

Take a second, which do you do?

Biggie.

♫ Smoking weed and bamboo, sipping on private stock.

Tongue tip down.

So I just stay more on the business side of everything.

Willard?

♫ Live from Bedford-Stuyverson.

Tongue tip up.

I ain't never saw that (voice echoes)

gun before.

I make my Ss with my tongue tip up.

(hisses)

If I'd been doing them with my tongue tip down

my whole life it would probably sound pretty similar.

Since I haven't practiced it a lot though

it doesn't sound quite the same.

(S noises repeat)

You should try to get them to sound exactly the same

'cause why not, cool party trick.

Ben Kingsley, Gandhi.

100,000 Englishmen simply cannot control

350 million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate.

So Gandhi's accent actually changed throughout his life

and Ben Kingsley's accent

as Gandhi changes through the film.

It goes from being much more British.

Let us begin by being clear about General Smuts' new law.

To sounding much more stereotypically Indian.

It would have been very uncivil of me

to let you make such a long trip for nothing.

It's not a stereotype though, it's really accurate.

One of the things that is a common feature

for most Indian languages and Indian accented English

are retroflex consonants.

Retroflex means curling back,

and the tongue is actually curling back like that

it's flexing back, so retroflex.

Civil resistor.

The function of a civil resistor.

Provoke response.

Is to provoke response.

Continue to provoke.

And we will continue to provoke until they respond

or they change the law.

You can hear those retroflex sounds

all throughout those words.

Kingsley?

If we obtain our freedom in murder and bloodshed

I want no part of it.

Gandhi.

Everything around me is ever-changing.

It's incredible, right?

Amazing, brilliant, oh my god it's so good!

Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs.

Two days ago we ran a Superbowl ad

that could've won the Oscar for best short film!

So, Fassbender has said that he wasn't actually going for

any kind of imitation of Steve Jobs.

Don't start with me, man.

And it's not a perfect match but.

(bleep) you!

He gets really close.

And it has turned out insanely great.

This is so good.

Less so, but still pretty good.

Remember, he is not even an American.

No!

He is an Irishman.

There's a really subtle kind of drawn out S sound

that Jobs had.

And it eats 80-88s for breakfast.

What are you guys seeing?

Breakfast. Seeing.

Another thing Fassbender gets

is that kind of slight nasality on ah sounds.

Apple's history. (voice echoes)

Synthesizer sampling

fast enough. (voice echoes)

Ashton Kutcher.

Why do they buy an Apple?

Because it's got bravado.

Played a younger Steve Jobs.

You gotta put in the hours.

It's a process of taking very centralized things.

Um.

How bad are you saying? It's pretty bad.

Get out. Yeah we could, but.

Get your (bleep) and get out.

No!

That was bad. (bleep) everything!

You're done!

Will Smith, Muhammed Ali.

Man, I done told you I'm through fighting.

Dropped my intention to hurt nobody.

I got a much bigger contender.

This is one of the things that ignorant men.

A much heavier opponent,

I'm fighting the entire U.S. Government.

Well, I just think this is amazing.

When you think of all the time

that Will Smith had to put into his physicality,

his body, and learning to box.

And you see how much of the boxing

he's actually doing in this film.

(crowd roars)

It's incredible that he had time to fit in dialect work.

Ali comes out to meet Frazier.

But Frazier starts to retreat.

[Both] If Joe back up an inch farther

he'll wind up in a ringside seat.

He worked really, really hard with an expert coach

and the results are incredible.

Ali swings with his left.

Ali swings with a right.

[Both] Just look at the kid carry the fight.

I love the way he has the rhythms and the cadence

and the pitch of Ali.

Frazier keeps backin'

But there's not enough room.

[Both] It's a matter of time before Ali lowers the boom.

The way he lengthens a lot

of those final M and N sounds.

'Cause he can't start countin' 'til Frazier.

Come down. Comes down.

And here's Ali.

Frazier's still risin' but the referee wears a frown.

Sean Penn, Harvey Milk.

So why then am I a homosexual?

If I'm affected by role models.

[Both] And no offense meant.

But if it were true that children mimic their teachers.

Teachers aren't that effective as role models.

We'd have a hell of a lot more nuns running around.

(crowd laughs)

So this I great, I just want to pick out one thing

which is cool, the vowel sound in a word like force.

National gay force.

So it's got a very kind of New York aw.

Force!

Aw, and force is the lexical set word

we use to describe this vowel

and we actually heard the word force, which is cool.

Force!

And you can hear Harvey Milk himself doing it here

in the words abortions.

Income tax is going to senior citizens,

abortion. (voice echoes)

And so forth.

And so forth. (voice echoes)

So listen, income tax is no good.

Twice in one phrase.

Alec Baldwin, Donald Trump.

God, I'm loving this press conference.

It's good to be with you.

I respect the press.

I have great respect for the news.

Let's take another question from the press.

Right, so this is a comedy impression.

Baldwin's made a lot of really sharp observations.

We stopped giving 'em because.

You're overrated.

We're getting quite a bit of inaccurate news.

[Both] Fake news.

And of course he's turned the dial up on him

he's exaggerated the features.

We have a kind of trumpeted-out lip shape

which Trump really does and he does it more.

Listen, that was locker room talk.

Nothing compared to what Bill Clinton has done.

Far worse. Okay.

Mine are words and his was action.

But there are subtle things that he's doing as well

things that he's doing with a vocal quality,

something about the rhythm that's really cool.

I've turned over all my businesses to my two sons.

My two sons.

Beavis and Butthead.

Who are right here.

Who are here today, can we get a shot of them?

Trump has a habit of lengthening out some sounds.

The greatest jobs producer.

And really shortening up some others.

I'm gonna work very hard on that.

So there's a lot of contrast.

Okay, this press conference is over!

Baldwin does it really well.

Thank you all for peeing here,

I mean for pissing here,

I mean for being here.

Joaquin Phoenis, Johnny Cash.

[Both, Fading Across] ♫ I keep a close watch

♫ on this heart of mine.

♫ I keep my eyes wide open all the time.

Okay, I don't think anybody would argue

that this isn't a brilliant performance.

It really, really is.

Oh, that's sweet.

Just for the sake of it, I'm gonna quibble.

There's one tiny little sound

that you can hear in Johnny Cash's accent

which is a wh sound for W-H words

like when and whistle.

Listen to it in Folsom Prison Blues.

♫ And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when.

♫ When I hear that whistle blowin'...

Here's Phoenix's version of the same song

in which he just uses a regular old wh sound.

♫ I don't know when.

♫ When I hear that whistle blowin'...

So you might say that this is a tiny thing.

When. When.

The whistle. The whistle.

And it is, it's a totally tiny thing

and again I don't wanna take anything away

from this performance. Thanks.

But it helps set the place and the time, I think,

or it could, and I think that's just an interesting example

of the ways in which really specific details

can just help kind of support the story,

hopefully not in a way that's distracting.

Yeah.

But that just sort of enriches it and brings us in.

John Wayne, Genghis Khan.

I share your taste in women, Targutai.

But not in blood.

Like I said in the last episode,

who the (bleep) let this happen?

Farwell, Tartar woman.

Meryl Streep, Julia Child.

That's exactly the sort of thing

that I'm very interested in learning how to do.

So in other words, learn how to make sugar syrup.

She sounds just like the real Julia Child.

Unsliced sandwich bread.

So much butter, it stops your heart just to look at it.

Whack it off!

It just seems to be a pure emanation

of the person herself.

I'm all ready! Utter bliss!

Today!

It's not just every single technical aspect,

the range, the inflections, the accent, the mouth shape.

I do know how to boil an egg.

The egg can be your best friend.

In this case, I think we get something of a sense

of Julia's sort of forthright flamboyance.

We're having a cheese and wine party!

Bonjour!

On The French Chef!

A joie de vivre, joy in life, from this voice.

(laughs)

Dear Avos.

That was a mistake.

Speaking French to you!

Wait, what?

You want Naomi Watts as Princess Diana?

That's what we need, isn't it?

You got it.

It's almost as if he doesn't know who I am.

One of the things that happens in Diana's accent

is that vowel sounds that for me are diphthongs,

they get smoothed in the direction

of being one single vowel quality.

So instead of ie we have something like ia.

I want him to smile. (voice echoes)

And instead of oh we have something like uh.

Choices. (voice echoes)

Listen to so follow and don't know

from Naomi Watts here.

So you followed him. (voice echoes)

Oh I don't know.

She moves in that direction,

but her lips don't want to move.

Listen to Naomi Watts doing buying time and five.

We're buying time.

Putting two and two together and making five.

So those price vowels aren't smoothed at all.

This is a detail, but it's one

that I really would've liked to see.

Bloody irritating.

It really would have helped conjure the character

and the time and place and social class for me.

Denzel Washington, Malcolm X.

Now the house negro, he lived in the house.

He lived right up next to his master.

Either in the basement or up in the attic.

Let's just talk about the vocal quality here.

Stuff that you're doing really in the throat

right at the level of the vocal folds themselves.

The house negro could afford to do that

'cause he lived better than the field negro.

He dressed pretty good, he ate pretty good

what the master left him.

Which sort of come together like this to make voice.

He's got kind of a gap and a little rubbing there

so we get that slightly hoarse breathiness.

[Both] If the master got sick, he said,

what's the matter boss, we sick?

He's found a way to do it

that sounds a lot like Malcolm X.

He loved his master.

[Both] I say he loved his master

better than the master loved himself.

Cate Blanchett, Bob Dylan.

You know we all have our own definitions

of all those words.

There'd be no music without the words.

That's all I ever do is protest.

That is the most important thing

there really isn't anything else.

I didn't come out of some cereal box.

I haven't really struggled for that.

'Cause no one out there is ever

gonna be converted by a song.

If it did I would certainly tell you.

So, Blanchett is a really gifted accent performer.

Yeah. Oh yes.

She's letting her oral posture here

do a lot of the work of evoking Dylan and his famous voice.

His song's like a personal conscience.

I hadn't heard it for a long time

I couldn't even sing it for you probably.

Her jaw's higher, lip corners are slightly pulled back,

the rest of her lips are soft

and there's kind of a narrow space in the mouth

but the tongue is really active

in doing a lot of the articulation.

Like bring your draft card or being yourself.

I don't think we have enough time to really.

Of course there's some of that characteristic

almost stereotypical Dylan nasality.

Thank you very much.

But she doesn't go over the top with that.

Do we?

Jennifer Lopez, Selena.

(sings in Spanish)

Okay, so I'd imagine this is almost certainly

a case of little prep time, and inadequate

probably little to no support.

(laughs)

The thing is, it doesn't seem to be a clear choice.

No, of course not.

I'm not sure if Lopez is going for Selena,

if she's going for just a touch of a Texan accent.

So you can hear a pin-pen merger,

pronouncing pin and pen the about the same

in the word fence.

Just like, we put up a wood fence in the front.

Pronounced like fence.

Fence in the front. (voice echoes)

Way back when.

But at other times she just sounds more like.

You know I been thinkin'. J. Lo.

Of maybe having some little animals of our own.

(laughs) Yeah!

Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Zuckerberg.

My attention is back at the offices of Facebook

where my colleagues and I are doing things

that no one in this room

including and especially your clients

are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.

Okay, so this is a really good example

of one approach to playing a real person.

Don't do them. No.

Eisenberg isn't going for a dead-on impression

of Mark Zuckerberg. No.

This is what Mark Zuckerberg sounds like.

When you put that information in your profile

that you bought a scarf,

that's something that your friends might find interesting,

right? No.

Um.

He is, nevertheless, evoking the character,

or his interpretation of the character, through his speech.

That is really good.

That's really good.

It's a very precise kind of articular,

very rapid with the tongue tip.

This is a man whose mind works really quickly.

You have part of my attention,

you have the minimum amount.

Who's very precise,

everything is sort of going over in there.

Just kind of ridiculous.

It's all about ideas, not about relationships.

I think it's probably a little bit of both, but.

He doesn't suffer fools. No.

Like, ever, at all.

And that was it. That's awesome.

[Both] It's raining.

Ewan McGregor, Alec Guinness.

[Both] Hello, there.

Yeah, okay, I know we're cheating here.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wasn't a real person.

[McGregor] Oh, I don't think so.

But Alec Guinness was.

He can go about his business.

And this is so iconic that when Ewan McGregor

took over the role playing Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Oh this is going to be easy.

He had to find a way to do

a convincing younger version of Alec Guinness.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Hello, there.

I think he does an amazing job.

In my experience there's no such thing as luck.

A lot of the particular vocal quality

that Alec Guinness had as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

A more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Sort of coming from opening up the pharynx.

Millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror.

Sort of stretching out the throat wide.

Suddenly silenced.

And you can hear a lot of that as a younger version of it.

I do hope he doesn't try anything foolish.

In Ewan McGregor's version.

I was beginning to wonder if you got my message.

These are not your droids.

Daniel Day-Lewis, Abraham Lincoln.

I am the President of the United States of America,

clothed in immense power.

We don't have any recordings of Abraham Lincoln

but his voice was described by contemporaries

and they describe it as being surprisingly high-pitched

kind of reedy and even whiny.

I'm hoping those numerous fathers

are going to be able to say to their sons

as I now say to mine.

So, Daniel Day-Lewis constructed something

around the character that we know as Lincoln

and some of these really famous, really familiar words.

Can you imagine he'll forgive us

if we continue to stifle this very natural ambition?

So the questions are basically, does it serve the story?

Does it feel like the character, is it specific,

does it draw us in, is it integrated?

It's true, because it works.

What do you think, did it feel

like a full three-dimensional real person?

I think yes, but I have to say, it has been done better.

Party on, dudes!

Michelle Williams, Marilyn Monroe.

I'll be playing Brushanka.

I want to be the best actress I can be.

So, this really strongly evokes Marilyn Monroe

without necessarily going for that dead-on evocation.

I'm. I'm.

Considering it. Very important to me.

She has that characteristic breathiness.

I like it a lot.

Oh yes, very much.

A lot of the accent sounds really good.

Sure. I don't know!

There's one particular thing,

she might not have been going for this at all, but.

(laughs)

But she doesn't quite have that sort of little girl tonality

that Marilyn Monroe developed.

I hardly know how to answer that

since they misinterpret that.

That comes from a lot of subtle shifts

inside the vocal tract.

Yes it is.

But a lot of it comes from

the way she sort of holds her tongue forward in her mouth.

You can her it here.

I'm happy to be back.

[Both] I'm happy to be back.

That sort of very forward tongue position.

Let's say I sleep in nothing by Yeardly's Lavender.

(laugh)

Well it's a different suit.

Johnny Depp, Whitey Bulger.

You were just sayin', just sayin' could get you buried.

All right, let's talk about Ts and Ds again.

You got two minutes.

This is really interesting

because he uses a particular part of the front of his tongue

again, and it's a lot of the front of his tongue

it's kind of the tip and some of the blade of the tongue.

Is that so?

Sort of like this.

That's $20,000 for you to not do the hit.

It's not really close to the teeth

the way we might expect for a New York

or most Boston accents.

Did you marinate the steak?

But it is right for Bulger.

Listen to Whitey Bulger.

[Bulger] That's, they said that I, something,

I don't know, I forget what they said.

Somebody threw my name in the mix.

And here again is Depp.

Take the money, keep your mouth shut

about what you just heard, it's best you're not involved.

Take the money, take the money, take the money.

So this is a little speculative,

but you notice the way he presses

that tongue tip in quite hard

and lets a lot of pressure build up behind it?

To me that almost suggests something about this psychopath.

You gotta tell me that.

Who has all this violence

but it's pent up until it explodes.

Let's look a that T sound again.

Take the money, take the money, take the money.

Now does somebody who uses a sound like that

automatically have a lot of rage inside them

and does it mean they're a psychopath?

No, of course not,

that's not the way accents work.

But it might contribute something to that impression.

And how did you plan to achieve that?

Even if it's just letting the actor

feel like there's something going on inside

that's controlled and then released.

That's two minutes.

Angela Basset, Tina Turner.

We always do it nice.

All right, here's something really cool about this.

This is kinda funny,

because I'm not actually talking

about Basset's vocal performance.

Every now and then I think you might like to hear

something from us.

Something you need.

Something maybe. Rough.

I'm gonna say something about what she's doing

when she's singing.

[Both] ♫ Worried bout the way that things might've been.

It's actually Tina Turner, she sings all of her own stuff,

but Basset obviously is performing it

and she's really, really figured out

exactly how Tiny Turner sang.

♫ Workin' for the man every night and day.

♫ Workin' for the man every night and day.

Watch her lips when you see this.

Watch the way they sort of trumpet it out like this.

♫ Rollin' on the river.

And here's Tina Turner.

♫ Rollin' on the river.

So it wouldn't have sounded like Tina Turner's voice

was coming out of Angela Basset's body

if she hadn't got that detail right.

♫ Rollin'! ♫ Rollin' on the river!

Kevin Spacey, Christopher Walken.

Trick or treat, smell my feet,

give me something good to eat.

If you don't oh no, I don't care,

I'll pull down your underwear.

Right, so again this is a party trick impersonation

it's not supposed to do anything

other than make us laugh and go, wow, yeah, that's him,

that's really good.

You know, the AFI, it's an award.

He's a talented impressionist,

I think he does a great job.

I'll be damned if any slope's gonna put

their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright.

It's like, the Tony, which I'm up for.

He takes that one Walken inflection.

Crazy, crazy.

And just repeats it over and over and over again.

Wow. Up for.

It's fun to do and it gets a laugh

so why not keep doing it?

Cuba Gooding Jr., O.J. Simpson.

Well I won't be wearing these much longer?

That was somethin'!

Bobby, have a good night, huh?

Wow.

So, Cuba Gooding Jr. Took a lot of heat

from not sounding like O.J.

This. That I did not,

and could not, and would not commit this crime.

Doesn't sound like this.

I did not, could not, would not have committed this crime.

And that's okay, it's totally cool.

It's a conscious artistic choice

made by Cuba Gooding Jr. And the director, probably,

not to try to do an evocation of O.J.'s speech patterns.

He worked a lot on the physicality

and of course on the essence, the soul,

the spirit of the guy.

But they left that part of it out.

They ask me every week, Dad.

They ask me, Dad.

Maybe because they thought it would distract

in some way from the story.

[Gooding] How much longer? How much longer?

Does it work for you, well?

It's a subject judgment.

[Both] I just want this trial to be over.

You make the call.

[Both] Thank you, your honor.

Two other actors in this same piece are doing much more

to kind of pick up the real speech patterns

of the people they're playing.

John Travolta playing Robert Shapiro.

Any time that I take on a new criminal case.

I wanted to hire the best forensic people in the world.

I always ask the client a question.

Is your qualification statement incomplete in that regard?

And Kenneth Choi playing Judge Lance Ido.

What tape excerpts are appropriate for the jury?

I know that you've made a commitment.

Would never suppress any information.

To see this matter through.

Diana Ross, Billie Holiday.

♫ Hush now, don't explain.

So Diana Ross isn't really doing anything

when she's speaking to evoke Billie Holiday.

I love you too.

But she really is when she sings.

[Both] ♫ Mama may have, Papa may have.

That particular tonal quality that Billie Holiday had.

♫ The child.

Comes from a lot of very, very subtle

and complex positioning of the muscles of the throat.

[Both] ♫ For the rain together.

She's somehow getting just the right combination.

To really get that Billie Holiday sound.

[Both] ♫ For the dream.

I find this really impressive.

It's incredibly subtle and complex.

The particular things that contribute

to somebody's individual tone,

that kind of quality of their voice.

Especially when we're talking about a great singer

like Billie Holiday.

Steve Carrell, John Dupont.

Do you have any idea who I am?

So I think Carell has done something

really interesting here.

Do you have any idea why I asked you to come here today?

He's taken some very specific, accurate observations

about Dupont's actual accent.

You can hear a bit of Dupont speaking here.

Hi, my name's John Dupont.

Welcome to Foxcatcher Farms.

He's got a lot of the accent, a lot of the vowel sounds,

a lot of the oral posture, his mouth kind of stays open

all the time throughout,

lip corners a little pulled back,

and he has those hesitations, weird long pauses.

It feels like Carell has slightly heightened

all of those things.

No. Oh, you're right.

Oh, no no, no.

Although this is just speculation.

Yes, it is.

For me the effect is of kind of heightening the sense

of the character's loneliness.

David.

Sort of oddness.

Lot of hard work to do.

Why don't you tell them something about the program?

He's feeling trapped inside himself

and that's a really crucial aspect of the character.

Athletic tenacity against the fish.

That the whole plot hinges on.

I win, they lose.

Don Cheadle, Miles Davis.

I'm a Gemini, so I'm two people anyway.

I was born modal, this and that.

If you watched the last installment,

I kind of gave Don Cheadle a hard time

about his cockney accent in Oceans Eleven.

Hang on, are you accusing me of booby trapping?

You had one job to do!

Gives me great pleasure to be able to say

that this is just fantastic.

That vocal quality that Davis had,

you might think it's easy,

you just kind of go raspy like that.

Man you ain't no Walter Cronkite.

I ignore the critics.

But he does it in a very particular way

that really matches Miles Davis.

Sometimes we find each other, you know?

That's all they know.

Like a war.

Miles Davis had surgery in 1957 to remove a nodule.

Where?

From his vocal folds, at least in his telling

he permanently damaged his voice.

Yeah.

By yelling after surgery.

What a nodule does is when you have it on the vocal folds

it prevents them from being able to come together

and vibrate smoothly, it's kind of bumpy and rough

and that's why you have that kind of hoarseness.

Yeah, sure.

Who said they had some?

So to be able to do that is really cool.

Will Farrell, Harry Caray.

Hey, if you were a hot dog!

A lot of things happening today.

And you were starving.

And they were all dramatic.

Would you eat yourself?

Comedy impression. One thing's certain.

You just gotta sort of pick one thing, you run with it.

Caray is very de-nasal.

He really doesn't send a lot of air through his nose

so it's almost like when you're stuffed up

and you don't have any air that can come through there.

Sure as God made green apples.

Don't jerk me around!

You do hear Farrell doing that

really extremely at some points.

First I'd smother myself with.

Seems the ingredients.

Brown mustard and relish, I'd be so delicious.

[Narrator] (bell dings) Conclusion.

So, you know, just in case you forgot,

this stuff is really, really hard.

Even moreso when you've got

the weight of expectations,

you're playing a famous person,

somebody with an incredibly famous or familiar voice.

There are various ways of going about this,

various artistic choices, all of which are completely valid.

It ultimately comes down to,

is it effective, does it serve the character,

does it serve the story, does it draw us in,

is it a real, full, textured human being?

Thanks for watching.

[Stage Hand] That'll do it. That's a wrap.