00:00I kind of had the accent down and it was really good but there's this one scene which is actually
00:04like it's a sex scene and Judd Apatow the director came up to me I'm literally blushing think about
00:09it came up to me and told me that my sex noises I was doing was still in an English
00:12accent
00:14hi I'm Belle Powley and I'm here with Refinery29 also don't forget to tune in to watch The King
00:20of Staten Island the movie coming out on June 12th
00:27I was really lucky learning this accent because I'd actually done a job like a year ago a play
00:33where I was playing someone from Queens which is I guess like a it's in the New York area what
00:39I
00:39find with accents is that it feels really really really hard it feels like you're really trying
00:44and then you do enough practice and then one day you kind of just wake up and it feels much
00:49more natural it kind of like settles into your mouth almost and it sounds weird but it does
00:54okay so I'm going to talk you through how I learned my Staten Island accent step one obviously if you
01:01can
01:01um work with a dialect coach because they definitely know more than you do about how it all was meant
01:07to sound I think it took me a few months to master this accent I mean that's how long I
01:11was kind of
01:12practicing it before I started but I obviously wasn't doing it for 24 hours a day for three months
01:16so it probably took me a number of hours step two I would say 100% just literally right into
01:23YouTube person speaking with whatever accent you want and just watch as many videos you can of
01:30like native speakers from that place because as well as it being about the sounds that your voices make
01:35it's also about like the attitude you know that people have there and Staten Island girls are very
01:41like confident like ballsy like there's quite a lot of like attitude in the voice while you're
01:45obviously filming in Staten Island and I was around loads of actual real Staten Islanders I did
01:50practice on a few like random people hopefully they don't they don't know that I was really English
01:56and then step three I'd say break down the vowel sounds from the consonant sounds and then give
02:03yourself a sentence and try and string it all together I was going to say the sentence um don't talk
02:10to me
02:11like that I just thought it was quite easy so basically the one main vowel sound with Staten Island
02:15is the talk becomes like talk it becomes like two sounds like or so it's like talk and then also
02:24the
02:24um consonant sounds become my dialect coach called it way more splashy so instead of don't like duh it's
02:33duh it's duh it sounds like DJ like it's like a j and talk like a T sound becomes like
02:39like more towards
02:41that like front of your teeth so don't talk to me like that would become don't talk to me like
02:49that
02:51that's it I've done a few fair few accents in my career I've done a lot of different like
02:56regional American accents I mean I would definitely say that learning like a whole new language is probably
03:02going to be more useful to you in your everyday life than just randomly learning an accent but if
03:08you're interested in learning an accent it is very useful way to do like vocal exercises and stuff
03:14which are good for everyone and also it's fun especially a Staten Island accent it is really fun
03:18it was an absolutely incredible experience and one of my favorite filming experiences I've ever had
03:27I loved it and I hope everyone else liked it too thank you for watching refinery 29 to watch more
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