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by madmoose 1126 days ago
The Wire even has a scene where Dominic West's character puts on a British accent. So a British man pretending to be an American pretending to be a Brit.

The Wire is very good.

It also features Idris Elba, so it has two British people playing Americans on either side of the law .

1 comments

Reminds me of Hugh Laurie in Avenue 5 when his character puts on a U.S. accent to appear more reassuring to the passengers, but falls back into an english accent when he's panicking.
I believe this native-accent is a common gag; Laurie also in one episode of House MD did the American-faking-a-British accent when he telephoned an overpond doctor in GB to learn more about the medical history of a patient.

I also recall an episode of The Mentalist, where agent Rigsby (played by Welsh Owain Yeoman) says he can imitate a british accent and proceeds to do so, only to receive a “nah, not good enough” by the protagonist.

The issue I (as a non-native English speaker) sometimes have with British actors is: how to pronounce their names?! Examples: the aforementioned Owain Yeoman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Siobhan (pronounced Shivohn IIUC) Finneran…

> The issue I (as a non-native English speaker) sometimes have with British actors is: how to pronounce their names?! Examples: the aforementioned Owain Yeoman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Siobhan (pronounced Shivohn IIUC) Finneran…

I don't think it's purely a non-native problem with those names, though they're not exactly English names.

I enjoy names such as Sean Bean ("Seen Been" or "Shorn Born"?) or even Mary Berry ("Merry Berry" or "Mary Bary").