(Almost) full frontal Providence

I;ve just begun watching the first episdoe of Brotherhood, the new Showtime series about family and politics in Rhode Island. I'm not a native Rhode Islander, but living there for 5 years I can tell a Providence accent from that of Boston or NH. And I must say, the non-American actors talk a lot like the natives, thanks to some serious vocal coaching.

Oh, and within the first 10 minutes, you get to see some dick (and I don't mean some guy named Richard). *

From a reccent Boston Globe article:

In any case, the particulars are important. If you're doing a TV series about Rhode Island's capital city, filming on location, striving for authenticity, you'd best get the accents right. And since a bad New England accent can turn drama into camp -- ``The Perfect Storm," ahem -- you'd better be prepared for some serious work.

Especially if your lead actors hail from Ireland, England, and Australia.

... The training, it turned out, was grueling. Before filming began, Clarke studied with Jones for six hours a day for more than a month, studying vowels, then diphthongs -- two vowels blended together to make a single sound -- then consonants, then cadence, slowing down his speech to sound more like the locals.




* I felt is was my duty as a woman to point this out. Not that it's a pretty one, or onscreen for very long, but it's there. That doesn't happen too often on American TV, even on Real Sex on HBO.

Tags: Rhode Island, Ocean State, Brotherhood, TV, accents, New England, penis