Television viewers are exposed to hundred of different dialects every day and are increasingly aware of even the tiniest differences in how people speak. Meanwhile, a growing supply of international acting talent has met the increasing demand for high-quality television. People like Samara Bay are there to make all of this work. She is one of Hollywood’s few dialect coaches.
Bay, now 37, grew up in Santa Cruz, California and was introduced to speech training at the American Conservatory Theater. At 23, she was accepted into the Shakespeare Lab, a six-week program run by the Public Theater in New York. It was there she realized that she loved helping other actors work on their accents. After 11 years of coaching, she has her regular approach nailed down and works with actors from all over the world.
The right dialect can help actors create a sense of authenticity and it also tells the audience a lot about their character. There is more than just one way to sound “Southern,” each state has a different dialect but there are also different dialects depending on which part of that state you are from. Learning the dialect can also help the actor create a one-of-a-kind character.
On top of that, it sends a message of both authenticity and quality to the viewer. Previously, Hollywood didn’t pay close attention to dialects. It wasn’t until Meryl Streep took home an Oscar for “Sophie’s Choice,” where her character featured a dead-on Polish accent, that audiences and Hollywood realized the artistic value of achieving an accurate dialect.
Today, many actors take it upon themselves to learn the dialect of a movie or show’s setting before filming begins.
For his role in the popular show “The Wire,” Idris Elba, raised in London by a Sierra Leonean father and Ghanaian mother, spent hours with police offices to hone his Baltimore accent. The result, according to the New York Times, is regarded as a master class in how dialect can enhance a character’s onscreen portrayal.
Similarly, many people watching “The Walking Dead” might not know that Andrew Lincoln is British. That’s because he lived in Georgia for a few months prior to filming so that he could immerse himself in the regional dialect.
But it is also up to people like Bay, who can work day-to-day on set or often meets with actors in her home in the hills beneath the Hollywood sign.
Her go-to method to get her clients ready to accept a new way of speaking? Have them act like a five-year-old. To do this, she has the actor stand up and run through physical gestures that are tied to vowels.
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