As was noted in episode 8, some of the Southern accents on “True Blood” leave something to be desired.
Granted, a decent Southern accent is not easy to pull off for most actors. Most, it seems, tend to want to way overdo it (and quite painfully, at least to native Southerners like me) – think Tom Hanks in “Forrest Gump” or Nicholas Cage in “Con Air,” to name but two – the result of which is more a caricature of a Southern accent than an actual Southern accent.
I should note here there is no single Southern accent. Among the Southern accents are, to my mind, three main accents (and various ones in between): the twang (think Dolly Parton), heard in the mountainous regions of the Upper South; the drawl (think Jimmy Carter), heard in the low-lands of the Deep South and the altogether different accent(s) heard in Louisiana (think Harry Connick, Jr.).
Which brings us back to “True Blood,” set in the fictional town of Bon Temps in northwest Louisiana, not far from Shreveport. Perhaps the show’s main actors can be forgiven for having less-than-perfect Southern accents seeing as all but one of the actors who play them aren’t native Americans, much less Southerners. This includes Anna Paquin, the Canadian-born New Zealander who plays the main character, Sookie Stackhouse:
Ryan Kwanten, who plays Sookie’s brother Jason, is Australian, while the vampire Bill Compton is played by Englishman Stephen Moyer.
Indeed, the only main character played by an American actor is Sam Merlotte, played by Sam Trammel, who just happed to be born in New Orleans.
Go figure.
2 Comments
September 22, 2009 at 9:02 pm
[...] isn’t working.” Having lived in the South, I can appreciate a little gothic kinkiness but the show was trying soooo hard. Two seasons later, staying with friends, I sat through an episode of Season 3 and realized the [...]
September 29, 2009 at 3:40 pm
TOO BAD MELISSA WROTE THIS