- Am I about to put my career on the line is the question?
Are you nodding at me because you want me to get rid of you
because you're the real person?
(contestant laughing)
Ugh! Ah!
(jazzy brass music)
Hi everyone, my name is Jack Wallace
and I'm a dialect coach here in Los Angeles.
Today we're gonna try and figure out
who has a real American accent and who is faking it.
One of the things that can happen
when you're doing an accent is that it's terrifying,
and so I'm gonna be looking out for who seems
a little nervous and how thrown they are by my questions.
(chiming music)
(guitar strumming)
- [Interviewer] Any immediate guesses
just based (nervous laughing) on their faces?
- If I had to make a wild guess
I'd be down to two out of five right now.
- Hi, my name is Teddy, and this is my natural accent.
- Hi, my name's Elise, and this is my natural accent.
- Hi, my name's Nadia, and this is my natural accent.
- Hi, my name is Rachel, and this is my natural accent.
- Hi, my name is Blake, and this is my natural accent.
- One of the things that happens
when we talk in an accent that isn't our own
is that we kind of have this imposter syndrome feeling.
And then some people might just not like to be on camera.
So (laughing)!
- [Interviewer] So we'll have you ask each person
a question.
- Hi Teddy. - Hi.
- Can you tell me about your favorite subject in school?
- It would have to be history.
Just being able to kinda backtrack time
and how it all lead to present time.
- Hey there Elise, how's it going?
- Good.
- Can you tell me about your hometown?
- This is it. - L.A.?
- Hm-mm. - Excellent.
What do you like most about L.A.?
- The people here are really weird.
(contestant laughing)
- Hey Nadia. - Hi.
- Can you please tell me about your hometown?
- Yeah, I'm from Iowa.
Cedar Falls, small town.
- Excellent, and what's the best thing about Iowa?
- The sunsets.
Yeah. - Thank you.
- Hi. - Hi there, how's it going?
- Good.
- Can you tell me about your favorite subject in school?
- I would say math, 'cause I like to add.
- Great. - Yeah.
- Do you have a favorite thing that you add together?
- One and two?
- What's it get? - Three.
- You should do math more often.
- Thank you.
- Hello sir. - How's it going?
- Can you please tell me about your hometown?
- I'm from a little town in Texas called Fulshear.
Less than 1,000 people.
- So good old Teddy here, he seems pretty calm,
pretty relaxed.
It feels like when he talks
it's the way he would normally talk.
At the moment I think he's in the clear.
Now Elise is very hesitant to talk.
Almost like she has to plan what she's about to say.
But when she does speak it seems to have American features.
The jury's still out on Elise.
Nadia was also one of the people
that was quite nervous when she came in.
But then when she was tell me about Iowa,
it's a very specific place to choose,
so either that's a good strategy
or she's actually from there.
Remind me of your name. - Rachel.
- Rachel!
Rachel does math.
Very confident, which is going against all the things
that I've said I'm looking out for.
And then Blake on the end.
If you're gonna go for an American accent
sometimes people go to the South first
because they're like, oh I get to disguise this better.
- [Interviewer] What three would you eliminate right now?
- Am I about to put my career on the line is the question?
I would get rid of the men, I would say.
- [Interviewer] All right, you guys can...
(quizzical electronic music)
How you feeling about these three?
Any of these three you would eliminate?
- Nadia's an enigma to me right now.
If I were to get rid of one of the people
I would like to get rid of Nadia
but I think she's playing a good game, so...
Ugh! Ah!
Are you nodding at me because you want me to get rid of you
because you're the real person?
(gaspy laughing)
You sure?
Yeah, okay.
We're gonna eliminate Nadia.
So right now I'm trying to think of a word
that would trip up somebody that was not American.
And because I'm British I'm already gonna say it differently
from how an American would say it.
The words that I would like these people to say
are gonna be horror story.
- Horror story?
- Horror story.
- Excellent.
- I would hedge my bets that it might be Elise.
- No!
- I'm American.
Yeah, I'm actually Australian.
- Ah-ha! (contestant laughing)
Yes!
She was the most reluctant to speak,
but also before you say the letter R in American
it changes the way you say the vowel before it.
But that doesn't happen in British and Australian accents.
We would say hor-rer,
but the R clings on to it in American, it becomes horr-er.
- Hor-rer.
- Yeah, with a little less R on the end.
- Yep, I'm never gonna be to speak in an American accent.
- That was so cool. (off-screen clapping)
- [Interviewer] You get an--
- This was really great experiment.
I think she did a great job making the sounds
but there were just a couple of nuances that she can
work on in order to convince other people.
(quizzical string music)