Why most actors don’t even try a Philadelphia accent.

The moment when the character of Kate Winslet in HBO’s Easttown mare says the word ‘overdose’ and drags the O’s forward so that the word is closer to five syllables than three, you know exactly where the small town murder mystery takes place – at least, if you’ve ever heard a Philadelphia accent before. Unless you’ve spent time in the region, chances are you haven’t. The characters in Rocky don’t talk like they’re from Philadelphia. Neither the ones in Silver Linings Playbook or The IrishmanDespite all the stories that take place in and around the city, there is a decided lack of authenticity when it comes to the way the locals speak – not a question of failed attempts, but a failure to try at all.

Writing in the New York Times in 2014, Daniel Nester called the Philadelphia accent “perhaps the most distinctive and least following accent in North America,” but on the screen, that distinctiveness seems to work against it. You’re more likely to hear fictional characters talking as if they were from Pittsburgh or Baltimore than from the pockets of the city – mostly old-fashioned Irish and Italian neighborhoods – where people drink ‘lumberjack’ by the glass. That makes Easttown mare, located in neighboring Delaware County, is not only distinctive but practically a unicorn. From the moment the first trailer dropped, locals seemed almost dumbfounded that Winslet even tried to put the accent, and even more so that she and the rest of the cast seemed to pull it.

If you’ve recently come across the Philadelphia accent, chances are Christine Nangle has had something to do with it. A writer and performer on Kroll Show‘s “Pawnsylvania” skits, she went viral in video last year where she was played an associate at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, and tiredly explained to a Trump employee that they are not in the habit of holding campaign events. With a similarly exaggerated attitude, she returned to play the secretary of Michael van der Veen, the Trump impeachment attorney whose reference to his office is in “PhillydelphiaCaused the Senate to burst out laughing. (To be clear, that’s not a Philadelphia accent, but dropping half the consonants from the word not Like many Philadelphia residents, Nangle has gradually suppressed her dialect, due in part to what she calls “ accent dysphoria. ” “When I went to college,” she recalls, “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, everyone can tell I’m an idiot.'”

There is so little representation of the Philadelphia accent in popular culture that it can sound wrong to the outside ears when people get it right. “It just doesn’t sound real, I guess,” says Nangle. “It’s like South Africa where you hear it and you think, ‘That’s not how anyone ever talks.’ When he set The fighter among white, working-class Bostonians, David O. Russell had his entire cast take on thick Southie accents so that they all sounded like Mark Wahlberg. But in Silver Linings Playbook, situated among Italian-American Eagles fanatics, there is no regional accent to be found. Growing up in neighboring Montgomery County, Bradley Cooper can break the accent for local TV, but there’s no whisper of it in the movie itself. Even M. Night Shyamalan, who is known for wanting to film and shoot most of his movies in the city, rarely lets his actors try, with the notable exception of Toni Collette in The Sixth Sense“At least she tried,” Nangle says.

Even in the Philadelphia area, the accent is dying. (The culprit: millennials, of course.) Go to a South Philadelphia restaurant or call someone to fix your oven, and you’ll probably hear it. Walk through the city center or a university campus, and chances are slim. And outside the area, few people are even aware of the accent enough to miss its presence. So over the years it has become common practice to intercept the vague New York language that Hollywood uses as a universal signifier for the white working class. (Remember: the police already on site when Law & AuthorityThe detectives show up.) Susan Hegarty, who worked as Winslet’s dialect coach Eastwood mare, recalls speaking to an experienced colleague from the Philadelphia area who told her, “I’ve been in this company for 25 years and have never been able to coach my own accent – not once.” When she tried to pitch producers on accuracy, she was told, “Nobody cares. Nobody knows what this accent is. We’re just going to New York. “Given that being overshadowed by New York is inherent to the Philadelphia state, residents seem to have it sorted out – Rocky may not sound like he’s from Philly, but he’s totally absorbed in the city’s identity – and the rest of the world doesn’t do anything the wiser Why even try the accent, when the reward for getting it right is sounding awful?

Easttown mare creator Brad Ingelsby grew up in Delaware County, where fictional Easttown is located, and had been trying to set up a project in the area for a while. (His script for 2020’s The way back was also set in eastern Pennsylvania, but the setting was moved to California so that star Ben Affleck could film close to his kids.) And his script for the seven-part series was laced with phonetic spellings to set the tone. But he says it wasn’t until Winslet decided to go all-in on the accent that production could tie to it across the board. “I think it was very important to Kate,” he says. “She said, ‘If this is about this part of the country, about this community, if we’re trying to have the community as a character on the show, then it has to be real.’ ‘

“It’s like South Africa where you hear it and you think, ‘That’s not how anyone ever talks.’

Winslet has said in numerous interviews that the “ Delco accent ” – short for Delaware County, and a close cousin to the actual Philadelphia accent – was one of only two accents that were so harsh that she “ threw things at her. ” (The other was Joanna Hoffman’s Armenia-by-way-of-Buffalo accent in Steve Jobs.) Craig Zobel, who directed Easttown mare, recalls appearing on set with a script covered in markers, and Hegarty pulls out one of the many lists she created to help Winslet with certain vowels. (The ‘O list’ for the first episode, of course, starts with ‘overdose’.) Hegarty says that while they were concerned about accuracy, it was also important to consider the ‘taste aversion’ some people have for the accent in its strongest form. “We just had to come up with a subtle version that was fair, but it wouldn’t turn people away.” Still, Rolling Stone critic – and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania – Alan Sepinwall wrote of the show, “Every long ‘o’ will make you question the life choices that led you to hear it.”

While Ingelsby doesn’t speak with the accent, his wife, who is from Delco, does, so Winslet’s first model was audio recordings of his family – his wife, her parents, their children – talking to each other in the car. Later, Hegarty and Winslet chose a woman whose accent was strong enough to be understood by Winslet, but so flexible that she could adopt it and still have room to act. Zobel found herself comfortable getting in and out, “turning into Kate Winslet” between takes, with some other actors clinging to their accents like life rafts. “Even at the craft services table, they still tried out the accent because they just felt like, ‘I get it – I don’t want to lose it.’ ”

There is more to it Easttown mare Then the accent, of course, but it’s an essential part of the story. Winslet’s character, Mare, is a high school basketball star who has settled into a desperately nondescript life in the small town where she grew up, and the way she talks tells you she’s not going anywhere. Her daughter, meanwhile, is playing in a band and hanging out on the university radio station, and it sounds like she could fit in anywhere. But if that daughter makes it, she better be careful when she comes back. “One of my aunts moved to California,” Nangle recalls, “and when she got back, she said ‘water’ ” – and hit the T in that last word. “We just destroyed her.”