By Keenan Mayo and Julian Sancton
There's a general rule about period films: if a character wears a powdered wig, he's got a British accent. But that becomes a problem if the character in question is declaring independence from Britain. The founding fathers' not-quite-British, not-quite-American dialects in HBO's masterful miniseries John Adams exemplify the fastidious attention to historical detail that makes a show about 18th century geopolitics so captivating. From London, dialect coach Catherine Charlton–whose recent projects also include A Mighty Heart, The New World, and Alexander–gives us a lesson in Hollywood linguistics.
VF Daily: How do we know what people sounded like in the 18th century? The accents in John Adamsare so distinctive.
Catherine Charlton: We don't know exactly. It's almost forensic in some ways. For example, an English lord who arrived in the colonies made a comment about how clearly spoken the Americans were compared to the British. This is interesting because my conjecture is that when you are in the midst of people from diverse backgrounds, you have to be clear in the way you speak. Otherwise you are not understood. Also, when we're talking about the Boston area, the Puritans believed that if you did not speak clearly and loudly enough then God would not hear what you were saying while reading the Bible.There was a book and several videos made about 20 years ago called The Story of English, and they had recorded people in Tangier Island in Virginia. If you closed your eyes and you didn't know that you were listening to something out of America, you would think that these people just stepped off of a fishing boat in either Cornwall or Devon.
Accents today are influenced by people moving from one town or village to the other, or the television, etc. But in those times, for example, John Adams used to ride to the Congress in Philadelphia from Boston on horseback. That took a long time. There wouldn't be a huge and rapid change of dialect like there is now. Tom [Hooper, director of John Adams] also said, in fact, that it makes it all the more tragic because the changes in a hundred years from when the pilgrims landed in Virginia and Plymouth Rock would have been soft. So the difference between the English and the Americans, in the way they sounded, would not have been huge. It really is like family being betrayed by family.
What are some of the characteristics of the American accents back then?
There were certain things that were quite clearly American. Webster was writing his dictionary at this time and they really hated the way the British would say things like "secretary [Ed. Pronounced "SEC-reh-tree]," "cemetery," as so on. And children were actually taught how to tap out syllables. Ce-me-ta-ry, mil-i-tar-y. It was a very complex thing for the actors to try and assume an accent that is developing. I figured that I would give them enough background information and then have them listen to particular British dialects with a preponderance of certain sounds—for example, in the Boston area the Pilgrim's ancestors were mainly from non-rhotic parts of Britain, when you don't pronounce the letter "r." So we could make a distinction between the Northern territories and the Southern territories. Virginia was mainly colonized by west-country people. Not like we expect audiences to notice. When you're doing accents it's like an interesting bit of set decoration. I want the actors to feel free with what they've learned and I don't want them to feel dependent on me.
How would you describe the day-to-day process with the actors?
I had them listen very clearly to the intonation patterns and the rhythms and just listen to the British dialect like a piece of music. This is the basis for accent work. And then we would say, "Let's try dropping an r' in here. Let's give a hint of what people would recognize as an American quality because this is drama and not phonetic analysis at a university program. We're talking about painting the picture. So the actors were unbelievably courageous. I think this was for all of them the most difficult thing they have ever done. The poor things will come to me and I will say, "these are your bass notes. And we'll add orchestration on the top of it. And whatever you do within certain parameters will be right. You find your sound, like everybody during that time was finding their sound."
I'm from one of the original 13 colonies. Can you place which one?
I don't do those games! The thing is… I don't profess to be a Professor Higgins. I have a great facility for understanding accents, repeating accents, and bringing actors to do them. When people normally ask me questions like that, I'm not so polite. I say, "I'm not the dancing dog. I'm the dog trainer."
What can we name the accents that are in John Adams?
It's different because you've got the Virginia ones and the Philadelphia one… I would say "American in the making." Is that a nice sound byte for you?