Frasier Online

watching the first season again, i noticed that Jane Leeves plays Daphne with a strong almost childlike Manchester accent, i didnt really notice this at first until seeing older seasons straight after, but it completely disappears i know this kinda ties in with "things that dont make any sense" thread but its worth discussing on its own, seeing as how we are nitpicking

I personally think Daphne went from being an eccentric and interesting character to a moronic frump in later seasons but her accent would've changed in real life the longer she stayed in the US.

IKnowitsEclectic wrote:I personally think Daphne went from being an eccentric and interesting character to a moronic frump in later seasons but her accent would've changed in real life the longer she stayed in the US.

Yeah, I think that's the main point really.

Daphne was pretty much some kooky light relief for the first few seasons but as her character changed and she became more involved in big story arcs (particularly around S6) her accent was toned down and she was treated in a more serious way. Can you imagine Jane delivering some of the heartbreaking lines she had at the end of S7 in that kooky OTT Mancunian? I think it was a wise decision to tone things down in that area, and there's a logic to it as well as pointed out above.

yeah i suppose, you couldnt have took her seriously in the major story lines wth that child like accent, and i know that all good shows have to have a grounding in reality, it would have been better had they wrote in the development of the accent, a couple of explanatory lines would have sufficed

Excuse my 'Yorkshire lad' ignorance - is it a manchunian accent? The one I'm more familiar with is the whole 'Shameless' / Gallagher brother / Psycho Paul accent. I wondered if it was more Preston way? Would any manchunians answer this? Cheers.

It will forever crack me up how sensitive you guys are to those accents. I rarely pay any attention to regional accents of Americans on TV.

CatNamedRudy wrote:It will forever crack me up how sensitive you guys are to those accents. I rarely pay any attention to regional accents of Americans on TV.

Ah well, we are very parochial, also, we do have quite a wide range of accents packed into a pretty small island.

I don't get too fussed by accents. Homegrown tv shows can't even get the correct regional accents for their show settings a lot of the time, so what's the point of worrying about how other countries handle it.

Moon-Crane wrote:I don't get too fussed by accents. Homegrown tv shows can't even get the correct regional accents for their show settings a lot of the time, so what's the point of worrying about how other countries handle it.

I'm just curious to know - it would settle a minor disagreement with a mate from Huddersfield who works in Manchester.

Moon-Crane wrote:I don't get too fussed by accents. Homegrown tv shows can't even get the correct regional accents for their show settings a lot of the time, so what's the point of worrying about how other countries handle it.

I'm not fussed by regional accents, but it bugs the hell out of me if a non-British actor is trying to put on a British accent and doing it badly!

I'm not saying British actors are any better at accents though - Robbie Coltrane, who played one of Daphne's brothers, was obviously trying to talk a bit more 'English' rather than his natural Scottish accent, and he failed miserably.

Another example of a bad accent is Colm Meaney in Con Air - why didn't they just let him use his Irish accent instead of trying to get him to try to sound American? It was terrible!

Jane Leeves had an appearance on The Graham Norton show where, if memory serves correct, she discusses her accent. How it was "difficult for her to do a Manchester accent even though she's from...."

Her brother Simon, Anthony LaPaglia, i thought was Australian? He even refers to Mel Gibson as "Australia's native son" in Braveheart during an episode. His accent always threw me a bit.

Whatever, brilliant acting by many of the cast members always kept me confused as to who was actually British and who was actually gay (not to say that there's a connection between the two). Which is how it should be. 'Frasier' did a great job at blurring a lot of preconceptions. Accents being one of them.

BURLINGTONTIGER2 wrote:Excuse my 'Yorkshire lad' ignorance - is it a manchunian accent? The one I'm more familiar with is the whole 'Shameless' / Gallagher brother / Psycho Paul accent. I wondered if it was more Preston way? Would any manchunians answer this? Cheers.

As a Preston(ish) person who doesn't really watch Shamless there is quite a Prestonness in the the accents

kat wrote:

BURLINGTONTIGER2 wrote:Excuse my 'Yorkshire lad' ignorance - is it a manchunian accent? The one I'm more familiar with is the whole 'Shameless' / Gallagher brother / Psycho Paul accent. I wondered if it was more Preston way? Would any manchunians answer this? Cheers.

As a Preston(ish) person who doesn't really watch Shamless there is quite a Prestonness in the the accents

Thanks Kat; I thought it might be. The only 'manchunians' I meet are Man United fans and, of course, they all have cockney accents. LOL.

CatNamedRudy wrote:It will forever crack me up how sensitive you guys are to those accents. I rarely pay any attention to regional accents of Americans on TV.

to back up what burlingtontiger wrote, the sheer amount of different dialects and accents in Scotland alone would astound you, and were talking about the same city here, for example, somebody in the east end of Glasgow, sounds totally different from someone who originates from the West of Glasgow and its a distance of only around 4 miles.

Now see I would think if you have that many different accents all over the place that you'd be easier on the accents that are used on screen. I would think it would be much more difficult to do a proper regional accent and you'd cut them some slack!

In the US, we have plenty of regional accents but for the most part, they are just that, regional. I have a very distinctive midwest accent and anyone from anywhere outside of the tri-state area (Wisconsin/Illinois/Minnesota can spot it. However, Wisconsin is about the size of England and Wisconsin itself doesn't really have any other dialects (unless you're from the south side of Milwaukee because then you sound like an uneducated yahoo even if you're not)

That being said, Roz most definitely does NOT have a Wisconsin accent and she most certainly would if she had grown up here. But it's never really bothered me that she is not nearly nasal enough to be from Wisconsin!

CatNamedRudy wrote:Now see I would think if you have that many different accents all over the place that you'd be easier on the accents that are used on screen. I would think it would be much more difficult to do a proper regional accent and you'd cut them some slack!

In the US, we have plenty of regional accents but for the most part, they are just that, regional. I have a very distinctive midwest accent and anyone from anywhere outside of the tri-state area (Wisconsin/Illinois/Minnesota can spot it. However, Wisconsin is about the size of England and Wisconsin itself doesn't really have any other dialects (unless you're from the south side of Milwaukee because then you sound like an uneducated yahoo even if you're not)

That being said, Roz most definitely does NOT have a Wisconsin accent and she most certainly would if she had grown up here. But it's never really bothered me that she is not nearly nasal enough to be from Wisconsin!

yeah i know that there are differing regional accents throughout the United States, and we here in the UK very rarely pick up on them, apart from maybe the New Yoik accent whic is very strong, and the deep southern drawl, but youll find most folk in the UK will critise a poor attempt at a regional and city type accent and if it changes with a character well certainly mention it, and yes, i know you mentioned Roz, but am not taking the bait, nice try

I wasn't trying to bait you. It just doesn't make much sense to me when there are a million different accents that you should be so critical if somebody isn't spot-on in their accent.

The only one I completely understand is the annoyance at Clive's accent because that's just a cheap attempt at recreating Dick Van Dyke's accent from Mary Poppins and it's awful!

CatNamedRudy wrote:I wasn't trying to bait you. It just doesn't make much sense to me when there are a million different accents that you should be so critical if somebody isn't spot-on in their accent.

The only one I completely understand is the annoyance at Clive's accent because that's just a cheap attempt at recreating Dick Van Dyke's accent from Mary Poppins and it's awful!

It's probably because when any Briton opens their mouth you know roughly where they come from and, in a country still very class-orientated, their background. That isn't to say you can judge how much money they now have, which is something different again, but you can hazard a guess at the kind of neighbourhood they came from and the type of school they attended.

it also annoys that whenever American TV does "English", forgetting of course that this is a country made up of four provinces, its always a posh plums in the mouth accent, you have to at least congratulate Frasier writers for trying with Daphne's accent and to some extent, Clives, but boy is Clives the worst ive ever heard on an American show of any kind

just had a quick thought there, what do Americans think of Hugh Lawrie's American accent on HOUSE?

wlan2nd wrote:just had a quick thought there, what do Americans think of Hugh Lawrie's American accent on HOUSE?

It's excellent. I had no idea he was British until I heard people on here talking about him.

wlan2nd wrote:it also annoys that whenever American TV does "English", forgetting of course that this is a country made up of four provinces, its always a posh plums in the mouth accent, you have to at least congratulate Frasier writers for trying with Daphne's accent and to some extent, Clives, but boy is Clives the worst ive ever heard on an American show of any kind

Clive's voice reminds me of that song: always look on the bright side of life'

CatNamedRudy wrote:

wlan2nd wrote:just had a quick thought there, what do Americans think of Hugh Lawrie's American accent on HOUSE?

It's excellent. I had no idea he was British until I heard people on here talking about him.

A couple of years back myself and a couple of friends had great difficulty convincing an American friend, a man from New Hampshire, that Hugh Laurie was not only NOT from his home State but actually is English.

Hugh's father actually won a Gold Medal for GB in the Olympics.

As for Daphne's 'early' accent (and those of many other 'Brits' in the series) I have absolutely no idea where they are meant to be from

I go along with the notion that it is not so much Daphne’s accent which changed, but the character which changed. For me the Daphne character we all knew and loved and which added so much to the show just disappeared when she married to Niles. The Daphne's mother character made up for the loss a bit, but really Daphne just could not behave like a carefree, eccentric, naive type after she married. The character could no longer provide "light relief" to quote Mr Blue Sky

By the way, on the subject of accents, I am amazed at how well John Mahoney (Martin), who is as far as I know an Englishman, can play an American. Being from the UK, I am not sure what the accent is. It seems to be a bit of a cross between New York and Boston with maybe other places as well. Maybe those from the US here could clarify what exactly it is.

Leander

John Mahoney (like Anthony LaPaglia) trained himself to speak without the British accent when he moved to the US. He doesn't speak with an accent when he speaks normally. Because he spends a fair amount of time in the Chicago area, John's American is fairly midwestern with a touch of east coast (though not Boston) thrown into the mix.