DT and the American Accent: A Study
...with a real drama school rarity (!!) and plenty of listening links to judge for yourself!
Today’s deep dive into anything Tennant was inspired by a Tumblr interaction I had earlier this week, regarding whether David’s done an American accent in any of the audio books he’s narrated. It got me to thinking: what if we were to expand that concept out a bit and look at more than just audio? I mean, most of David’s fans are aware he enjoys the challenges that come with changing his accent, and he’s often said doing so makes him feel more in touch with a particular character. So why not look at the topic in a little more depth?
Before we get into the weeds of this one, though, I’ll just say this at the start: this should by no means be considered a comprehensive study of every single time David’s done an American accent. His catalog of work is simply too large for me to go around making that sort of claim!
Now most of David’s fans know he uses an American accent in the three television series he’s done in the US. There’s 2010’s unaired pilot episode of Rex Is Not Your Lawyer (watch it here) a US version of Broadchurch entitled Gracepoint, which aired in 2014, and an 2018 HBO comedy series called Camping, based on the 2016 UK television series of the same name. We won’t be discussing any of these here. David also did American accents in the plays The General From America in 1996 and Lobby Hero in 2002, but as I plan to feature both of these plays in future posts, I won’t be doing deep dives on these just yet, either.
No, today we’re going to take a look at a selection of some lesser-known works in which he’s known to have used the accent. Some of these works will certainly be familiar to David’s fans (and I’ve previously covered a few elsewhere on this site!) but it’s my hope one or two of the works I’ll be featuring won’t be as well known. As a matter of fact, readers, if you know of something else David did in an American accent which I don’t cover here, I heartily encourage you to add it to the comments below. Let us all know about it!
Let’s begin…chronologically, shall we?
Twelve Angry Men (1990)
If I had to pick just one of David’s works which would fall into the “I’ve heard little to nothing about this” category, I’d pick this one. It’s a play he was in while he was still in drama school, and it just so happens it’s one of his earliest works (that I’m aware of) where he used an American accent.
During his second year of drama school, the just-turned 19-year old David was a member of a theatre company called Theatre Positive+ Scotland. The company had been formed to raise funds for an HIV and AIDS awareness organization called the Scottish AIDS Monitor, founded in 1983 to educate gay men about the threat of HIV and AIDS.
The company’s first production was Twelve Angry Men, an American courtroom drama written by Reginald Rose which focuses on the jury of a murder trial and the deliberations by the twelve men on the jury to reach a verdict. Rose adapted his original 1954 live television play version for the stage in 1955; in 1957, he rewrote it again to adapt it for the silver screen. Starring Henry Fonda as Juror #8, the film version was nominated for three Academy Awards. It’s also consistently rated as one of IMDb’s top five films of all time.
Theatre Positive+ Scotland’s version of the play was a short run. It ran for three nights only - 24 April to 26 April 1990 - and started at 7:30 pm at the Third Eye Centre on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, with one 15-minute interval. The venue is known today as the Centre for Contemporary Arts.
(By the way - you might notice the blurb above says Theatre Positive+ was made up of “ex-RSAMD” students. This isn’t quite accurate. The company was made up of both former and current RSAMD students - of which David was one.)
The reaction the play received was nothing short of stellar - it got rave reviews! You can read one such review below. Other reviews of the play I have in my archives are very similar in tone. And while this particular review mentions none of the actors by name, I can tell you David played Juror #8 (the role played by Henry Fonda in the film).
And about those American accents? Well, you might’ve noticed this passage:
“For that reason if for no other, it was worth the cast's attempts at various forms of American accent — even if those accents, particularly in moments of rage, lapsed occasionally into Glaswegian.”
I won’t delve too much further here into the history of Twelve Angry Men. I know a LOT more about it, but this is one of the many productions which fall into David’s drama school years in Scotland.
For that reason, I’ll reserve any further in-depth exploration for an episode of my seems-like-forever-in-development podcast (also called A Tennantcy To Act) about David’s early Scottish theatre career, c1980-c1994. (And if you want to hear a mini-sode from the podcast about a 1989 radio play David did, just click below!)
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Hurlyburly (1997)
In 1997, David took on the role of Mickey in David Rabe’s blisteringly caustic play Hurlyburly. The role would take him for the first time to the West End’s Queen’s Theatre (now the Sondheim) and would run from August to November 1997. The run at the Queen’s was a transfer from its original, earlier run at the Old Vic - when David stepped in, he was replacing some fellow named Daniel Craig (yup, THAT Daniel Craig!) and joining a cast which included Rupert Graves and Andy Serkis.
They did the entire play in American accents!
Want to read more about it, see pictures from the play, and learn some interesting trivia about it? I wrote about the play in-depth right here!
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Classic FM One Hundred Favorite Humorous Poems (1998)
This audio series of one hundred poems was produced by Heavy Entertainment and published by Hodder Headline Audiobooks in 1998. David was chosen to read sixteen out of the one hundred poems; one of them, Brush Up Your Shakespeare, was written by Cole Porter. David does this reading in a purposefully over-the-top, ridiculous American accent, and it’s pretty amusing to listen to. I’ve written about this series recently, so if you’re curious about what David sounds like, pop on over there via the link below and read about it in more detail. There’s a download link there so you can find out!
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How To Train Your Dragon (2004-2015) and Wizards Of Once (2017-2021)
David’s been Cressida Cowell’s narrator of choice for her blockbuster How To Train Your Dragon and The Wizards Of Once series of books for the last two decades. David’s often said how these series strained even his wide range of accents! You can see him talking a little about the process here (and whether he might eventually have to do an American accent!):
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Of Mice And Men (2010)
John Steinbeck’s iconic 1937 novella, Of Mice And Men, narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two itinerant migrant field workers drifting from place to place in California during the Great Depression, in search of new job opportunities. George, a quick-witted but uneducated man who has been best friends with Lennie since they were children, adopts the role of guardian to the bulky and strong but mentally disabled Lennie. When they are hired at a farm as ranch hands, the novella recounts the tale of the resultant tragedy.
Of Mice and Men has had a long history of radio, television and stage adaptations, one far too lengthy to go into detail here. But in 2009, writer and dramatist Donna Franceschild (who David Tennant fans will immediately recognize as the writer of 1994’s Takin’ Over The Asylum!) was chosen to adapt the novel for a radio play. That September it was announced David was to play the role of George, and Liam Brennan the role of Lennie.
And when Franceschild’s dramatization was recorded in the studio in early 2010, the entire production was recorded using American southern western (see below for an addendum) accents.
Of Mice And Men was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in its Classic Serial spot on 7 March 2010 at 3 pm. It starred David as George and Liam Brennan as Lennie, with additional cast played by Jude Akuwudike as Carlson/Crooks; Christopher Fairbank as Candy; Melody Grove as Curley's wife; Neil McKinven as Slim; and Richard Madden (yup, THAT Richard Madden!) as Curley. It was a BBC Scotland Radio Drama production, and was directed by Kirsty Williams.
The drama was repeated three times in 2013: twice on 19 Jul 2013 on BBC Radio 4 Extra at 10am and 3pm, and again on 20 Jul 2013 at 3 am.
If you’d like to listen to Of Mice And Men, it’s been uploaded to The Internet Archive. Click here to download and listen!
Addendum: Tumblr user @arcanetrivia observed that the accent David used in Of Mice And Men was actually more akin to a western accent than a southern one. She’s absolutely right, of course! Her observation sent me down a wonderful nerdy rabbit hole of linguistic analysis of the accent - if you, too, are interested I’d recommend listening to this video. It seems David was trying his best to imitate the emphasized-for-fiction Old West sort of accent he'd almost certainly heard in western films.
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A Night With A Vampire (2010-2011)
The long-running BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book At Bedtime’ series presents, according to its website, “readings of fiction, including modern classics, new works by leading writers, and literature from around the world.” Its selections are usually abridged and read by well-known personalities over the course of one to three weeks. On occasion the series featured collections of short stories, and when this occurred, five stories were broadcast, one each evening.
For a total of ten days over the Halloween periods in 2010 and 2011, the series broadcast A Night With A Vampire, produced by Clive Brill for Pacificus Productions. David Tennant was the featured narrator. Each of the five selections in both series was roughly 14 minutes each. The first series was chosen from Victorian era literature and was broadcast in from 22 November 2010 to 26 November 2010. The second series was chosen from 20th century literature, and was broadcast from 28 November 2011 to 2 December 2011. Both series were rebroadcast in 2013. In addition, all episodes of Series One were rebroadcast in 2019, and all episodes of Series Two were rebroadcast in 2015.
While most of the dramas were read in either David’s native Scottish or his RP accent, there were some notable exceptions. In the 2010 series selection “Luella Miller”, a drama by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman about a woman who seems incapable of surviving on her own set in small-town America, David used a southern accent. In 2011, three of the five dramas saw David choosing to use various American accents: a midwestern-ish accent in Fritz Lieber’s “The Girl With The Hungry Eyes” (about the lure of a glamour model vampiress) and Richard Matheson’s “Drink My Blood,” (a dark comedy about a kid who wants to become a vampire), and a southern accent in Edith Wharton’s “Bewitched”, about a man who continues to visit a long-dead girlfriend.
If you’d like to listen to the entirety of A Night With A Vampire, some friendly soul uploaded it to the Internet Archive. Click here to download, and enjoy!