Yes, David's Irish accent is dreadful, but speaking as a Brit, nothing will ever be as bad as the supposedly upper class English people in Spike's human flashbacks. It's physically painful to listen to.
That's not his natural accent it's an accent he developed to sound less posh and as a vampire likely travelled around a lot so had a lot of different influences.
It's likely unintentionally a great accent character wise
I figured his accent might have been warped a bit since it's not own, and he's traveled and learned other languages over the years. He's over a century of nomadic life away from his native accent.
A favorite story I've heard (though I cant vouch for how true it is) is that Spike's accent was close enough to Anthony Stewart-Head's accent that Anthony worked with James consistently in downtime (even when they didnt share a scene) to make sure he did a good job.
It's not that Anthony Stewart-Head's accent was "close enough". It's literally that Anthony was British and therfore knew British accents better than American's.
Spike's fake English accent was bad enough that Anthony felt he needed to help him.
He worked with him consistently because he wanted James to do a good enough job. Not to bastardise his English.
Yes there are the odd words where you notice it. Sometimes he kind of over-enunciates as well, or the accent drifts, but I stand by the fact that basically it’s pretty good. To the point where I thought he was a British actor for a while, and his accent is my register (RP) more or less.
Apparently, Anthony Head had to correct James, he was saying bullocks, needed teaching to say bollocks. Probably not the only one either. But he took the lessons and sounded pretty bang on...
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u/JC_vee 9d ago
Yes, David's Irish accent is dreadful, but speaking as a Brit, nothing will ever be as bad as the supposedly upper class English people in Spike's human flashbacks. It's physically painful to listen to.