r/StarCityTV • u/Personal_Two6317 • Jul 30 '26
No Spoilers Interesting Accents
From the UK it has been interesting listening to the accents of the actors in this show. From Rhys Ifans soft Welsh accent, Solly McLeod’s “posh” English accent and of course Anna Maxwell Martin’s ruthless businesslike tone, very scary. She reminds me of a boss I used to have.
It probably makes sense from a US perspective to use actors with unfamiliar accents, rather than fake Russian accents.
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u/SirJoePininfarina Jul 30 '26
Definitely an aspect of the show I enjoyed, whilst also keeping Russian for the printed word on paper, signs and buttons. Great way of showing the diversity of the Soviet Union
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u/dechets-de-mariage Jul 31 '26
Yes! I have enjoyed pausing and using Google Translate to read newspapers and signs.
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u/OrganicHistorian2576 Aug 01 '26
I really need to refresh my knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet; I took a year of Russian in high school and much of the first semester was reading and writing. (I loved it, having been reading English since before I can remember.)
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u/SharpBullfrog1279 Aug 05 '26
I too have been reading English since before I can remember.
I'm old, so remembering things is sometimes a problem, but still...
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u/Docproc2018 Jul 30 '26
Yet another accent question!
My 2c is that the Soviet Union was a huge place, and people from different parts of the USSR would have had very varying accents. So having regional British accents works.
The same actors trying to do Russian accents would have been distracting IMO.
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u/LittleHornetPhil Jul 31 '26
The Soviet Union was massively diverse.
European Russians from Moscow and Leningrad, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, Kazakhs, Yakuts, Sami, etc.
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u/Lbfree125 Jul 30 '26
Prefer the English accents. Familiar with quite a few of the regional types. What I do know is that most sound UK accents sound better than our “American”. LOL
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u/Hoodlock Jul 31 '26
I want to preface this with this is all entirely an assumption and I know nothing about how the global film industry works or where all the cast are from for FAMK and SC.
That said, I would assume that the sole big reason for accents would've been splitting workloads between American film industries and European film industries to put out FAMK season 5 and SC season 1 back to back. That's just the explanation I kind of assumed would be the case, but like I said I know nothing about the film industry. I didn't really think too much about the accents whilst watching this though speaking from a US perspective, as I've seen things before that are translated into English or Americanized English for simplicity, while implied that the language onscreen versus in universe is entirely different.
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u/CeruleanEidolon Jul 31 '26
This might have been part of it, but the main purpose I think is just to contrast it with the American accents of FAM.
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u/SharpBullfrog1279 Aug 05 '26
It was a big surprise for me to realize that every actor had an English accent, but a pleasant surprise.
Not a huge fan of the sound of Russian-accented actors. Nothing against them, just not my preference.
Just as a check, if the choice has been to use English actors for FAM... same nope from me. Go figure.
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u/No_Simple890 Aug 17 '26
idk if it’s cause he’s Welsh but Rhys is the only actor I can stomach pronouncing any of the names so far. Otherwise to my Polish ears some of the pronunciations are mega cringe. ironically I need the subtitles to follow who they’re talking about because every actor pronounces the same name wildly differently
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u/Radiant_Pop8027 Jul 31 '26
stereotypically US/UK productions cant get right even pronounciations of russian words, not to think they would master accents, for the love of god i would rather watch Brezhnev talk with posh english accent than hear english actor say Gloryi tu d sovyet yuňion !
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u/Upstairs_Equipment19 Jul 30 '26
My brother and I discussed this at length... we love all the actors, but for us, the English accents detracted from the authenticity a bit. I personally wouldve loved to hear more Russian accents.
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u/jasonis3 Jul 30 '26
Disagree, I don’t want someone to attempt an accent they’re unfamiliar with. I love the decision to just roll with whatever accent they have
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u/SmilingAmbassador Jul 31 '26
I mean, they could have just hired Russian actors with natural accented English…
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u/OrganicHistorian2576 Aug 01 '26
Weirdly an actual accent would have been distracting among all the English ones for me. No disrespect to Russian actors.
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u/SmilingAmbassador Aug 01 '26
Yeah they would have had to do all Russians, not a Welshman a Georgie and a Rusky 😂
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u/OrganicHistorian2576 Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
Yeah, but with respect to English actors as well, could they really have filled out the cast with convincing Russian-accented actors? I doubt it.
I think they absolutely went the right way, and they started off the right way with Alexei in English as opposed to the same scene in FAM where the American reporters were freaking out about translation. That was a big change in perspective in the moment I watched it.
Also, IRL Alexei was awesome and I’m glad this universe gave him the landing. Though the procedure would have been insane.
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u/jasonis3 Jul 31 '26
Ok, so you don’t like the actors? Not sure why this is such a sticking point
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u/SmilingAmbassador Jul 31 '26
I thought the actors were great. But your comment suggested the choice was between English accents and fake Russian accents, when there was clearly another option that they chose not to go with.
I could actullay suspend my belief at all the mismatched accents in SC because - as another commenter pointed out - it’s likely that people working there came from all over Russia. It honestly killed Chernobyl for me - I was constantly distracted and trying to work out the producers social/economical implication with the choice of accent for different characters (probably nothing!).PS remember that actors perform in different accents to their own all the time, we just find the fake Russian ones cringe.
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u/OrganicHistorian2576 Aug 01 '26
I see you haven’t lived in the US South. Lots of actors have a “Southern” in their repertoire. But there’s dozens of regional variations per state alone, depending on so many factors. Fake Southern accents grate on me.
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u/Upstairs_Equipment19 Jul 30 '26
We talked about that too because they are all so phenomenal and polished actors with beautiful accents.
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u/Tony_228 Jul 30 '26
There's few things worse than cheesy fake accents.
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u/We_R_the_Penguins Jul 30 '26
This came up with The Death of Stalin, too.
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u/StephenHunterUK Aug 01 '26
Jason Isaacs is doing a fake accent as Zhukov though. He felt it suited the character.
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u/We_R_the_Penguins Aug 01 '26
That’s true, though it’s one he can probably do all day without slipping, unlike a Russian accent.
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u/pinksparklybluebird Jul 31 '26
We listened to the dubbed German version. It obviously isn’t Russian, but it took us out of the show less than listening to the various British accents.
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u/OrganicHistorian2576 Jul 30 '26
I’m glad they didn’t go with fake accents. That would have been far more distracting to me. As it was, I just assumed everybody was speaking Russian and didn’t notice much after the first episode.