My New York accent has brought in a surprising amount of work, but here’s the thing: I’m not from New York. Not even close. I was born in Arizona and spent most of my life there. I’m not a dialect coach, I’m not from New York, hell up to this point I keep forgetting to even put a New York accented performance in my demos and reels.
No, I learned New York thanks to a guy named Terry the Shitter. But we’ll get back to that.
When people find out I’m a voice actor, they usually ask me if I’ve been in anything they’ve seen, if I can do an impression of H. Jon Benjamin, and what accents I can do. Sure, it’s a little annoying because people forget that voice actors are actors first, and I bring characters to life through my life experience, not some party tricks. But yes, I do accents, because they’re part of what keeps a voice actor employed.
The thing is, there are only a few accents I’ll book on the audition. My New York accent, as we’ve mentioned, is in-demand. Texan and Southern are a couple I bring work on, since being from Arizona, I grew up around twang. But in an industry where it’s easy to bring in talent from all around the world, I focus on American accents. Jobs like MOUSE: PI For Hire come my way because they’re actually being made outside of the US, and they look for Americans that can do American accents. And that’s me. I busted out my cocky, chip-on-the-shoulder New Yorker, and I landed 6 roles.
However, accents are very important when building out a world, and casting usually wants to complete their project using the fewest hours in-session as possible as long as quality is strong. That means I often get asked in the session, “Hey, how good is your RP?” or “Have you done a Texas accent before?” They’re not roles or accents I auditioned for, but they pad out the four-hour minimum when we crack out the main role in three.
That’s why even though I focus on American accents, I also bring in the common go-to’s.
This is the list of accents I can do up to this point in my voice acting career:
- New York (this one has actually been a very in-demand accent for me)
- Boston
- Texas, or Texan
- Cajun
- Southern
- General American (obviously)
- Midwest
- Chicago
- California
- “Valley”
- Trans-Atlantic (or Transatlantic)
- Received Pronunciation English, or RP English
- High-Fantasy
- Arizona (not that many people ask for it)
- North American
As you can see, 11, 12, and 13 on this list are not American accents. They’re super common in video games, however, which is why I spent time learning to perform them.
So how can you learn accents for voiceover?
Keep in mind, I’m not a linguist or accent expert. You’ll want to work with an expert if you’re looking for tried-and-true advice on the topic. I pick up accents by playing around with them. But here’s how I see them in my mind.
- Some accents exist on a slider. For me, New York and your more Cajun/Louisiana accents both have a similar approach to the R sound. The difference to me is in pacing, and attitude. New York starts off impatient, sharp, and agitated, then I play around with it to find the exact character. Cajun/Louisiana is a bit more relaxed and easygoing, so it has a leisurely pace to it. Again, I hit that part first then play around with it to find the real character.
- Start with the vowels, then work out. Grab a video, check out IDEA’s dialectsarchive.com, find a character you like. Hear how the vowels sound and change word to word.
- Find a “grounding” phrase and sound and master that. Once you’ve got something you can say to get into the accent right away, expand outward with the character. Sometimes in a session, I have to ask the director to give me a couple of minutes to work the character out. It’s like playing with clay. I pick the color and texture of the clay, then I work on it until it resembles our character.
- Live in the accent. Spend a day, a weekend, a week in that accent. Make it natural to you. That way when you need to pull it out in a session, it’s like putting on a worn-in pair of jeans rather than trying to squeeze yourself into it.
- Have fun with them! Fun fact: most of my accents started out as dumb characters I made up when playing video games with my friends or creating a new character for D&D. My New York accent originally started as this absurd character named “Terry the Shitter” while playing The Division 2 wayyyy before I ever got started in voice acting. It was SO BAD. Terry didn’t need to be from New York, but for some reason, as quickly as I came up with Terry, I also decided he was from New York. And the character was fun, so my friends kept asking “What would Terry think about this?” and I’ve kept reprising the role in Discord to this very day. Then I took that same accent and brought it to Stacy Ignatius Crowe, or Iggy, an Oath of Vengeance Paladin in a D&D campaign. I felt like mastering the accent more for no reason in particular. Again, it was before I ever decided to start voice acting. I just thought it was fun, so I kept bringing it back up. Now I get paid to use that same accent all the time. And it’s all thanks to Terry the Shitter.
So whether you’re getting into voiceover or just looking to learn accents, remember it’s all about having fun with them. Find references, understand the “anatomy” of the sound, then have fun living in them. One day a director might ask you if you can do an accent, and you’ll remember the day you made that accent your own.