playing down RP accent

[JTBmum]

Hi,

Any advice on making an RP accent more generalised. Ds has casting and accent should be any but not posh. Ds is probably classified as RP

Thanks

[In4aPenny]

hmmmm, my only advice if its just to tone down the RP accent is to perhaps lower the voice a little (depends how it sounds; that might be bad advice of course) but also to drop the ends of words that end in the letter 't and if that doesnt sound right then go a bit more 'street' (only a BIT) then remove middle letters like the D in 'didn't. You'd have to play around with it. You are aiming at it to sound neutral and not 'nice' or 'pleasant and polite'.

There are people on YouTube who do vocal coaching for dialects and accents. That is probably your best bet.

Hopefully someone else can advise better.

[TotallycluelessMum]

I think we all adapt our accents depending on who we're talking to (I always sound more Welsh when I go back to Swansea) you could tell DS to just chat as if he's with some of his friends that are less RP....
it may work

[Coco]

She could talk to me for a few minutes, that could do it!

[Genevieve]

perhaps he could try pretending to 'sound' like he's tired , that drags words out a bit..and if he can speak in a 'lazy' way, so to speak, he may well drop the t's ! very difficult to change your accent for too long without slipping back, its a real skill ! good luck to your ds

[pg]

I guess every actor will handle this differently but it's something I've had to do (because I come across as a bit of posh bird apparently ). I find it very hard to tone down my RP without sounding bored or false, so I would probably elect to do another accent I am comfortable with and opt for the posh/well-educated end of it. So, rather than dropping any consonants in RP, I might choose an accent where consonants are often dropped but aim for reasonable diction within the accent (because that sort of suits the kind of character I would normally be cast as). Does that make any sense? I find it quite hard to change my own natural RP, unless it is to "heightened" RP - which might be handy for Noel Coward, but isn't much help for many other castings

[JTBmum]

Thanks for advice, yes I think trying to modify accent just sounds naff. So told ds just to try to be natural. Lots of tv kids dramas these days dont seem to want RP