Emma Thompson is the latest to give it a stab. Thompson stars in the thriller, “Dead of Winter,” which is set in rural Minnesota and opens in theaters Friday. The native Londoner drilled for the part not by way of a professional dialogue coach, but by going straight to the source: Aunt Tracy from Anoka County.
Film co-writer Dalton Leeb, originally from Coon Rapids, enlisted his aunt, Tracy Dooley, to help Thompson perfect the hard-to-master accent, as first reported by WCCO. Leeb wanted Thompson’s character, Barb, to sound like his late grandmother, whom he’s described as a strong woman who could confront adversity with a sense of humor. Out of all of his aunts and uncles, Dooley, the 10th of 12 children, sounded the most like her.
While Minnesotans remain divided on whether McDormand got it right, Kokernot was satisfied with her elocution. She said McDormand instinctively could mimic the accent in a way that the actor’s dialect coach could not.
“It’s trickier for people than you’d guess,” Kokernot said. “The dialect coach, every time she tried to do it, she sounded more Irish than Minnesotan. It’s flatter than people want it to be. It’s less rolling, and there’s less variance in tone.”
It may not be as sexy as a Texan drawl or as charming as an Irish brogue, but our way of speaking is a distinct marvel. Local voice coaches have noted our unique oral posture, which may include pulling back the corners of our lips to keep words tight and bright. We flatten our vowels. We pronounce the long “o” in words like “boat” with a single, horizontal syllable, rather than stretching the “o” into two.
I predict this column will come off as tone-deaf and insulting to all of you who will write me insisting that you enunciate like Walter Cronkite, avoid folksy jargon and prefer “Masterpiece Theater” over muskie fishing. I get it. Our little state isn’t on the big screen often, and when it is, it’s saturated in stereotypes of us being unsophisticated or naive. The accent has become shorthand for Rube from the Northland.
But while some Minnesotans seem embarrassed by their accents or even deny their existence, I argue we should lean in. Regional accents are dying out as American speech becomes homogenized, possibly due to migration and TV, and now TikTok. For a state that loves to talk about its exceptionalism, why fight a cultural aspect that makes us literally exceptional?
I can attest that Dooley, a 68-year-old grandma who carefully chooses her words and has a slower cadence, does sound Minnesotan. Her kids tease her specifically for the way she pronounces the word “sorry.” But she doesn’t hear it. (“When I watch TV, say, ‘Good Morning America,’ I feel like they’re talking like me,” she said.)
Last month, Thompson gave Dooley and other Minnesotans a shout-out when speaking at a news conference in Switzerland for helping her understand not only the accent, but how the extreme climate has shaped culture in our region. Thompson said she learned from Minnesotans that you need multiple pairs of gloves for different occasions, and that frigid fingers could spell death.
McDormand’s memorable portrayal of a very pregnant police chief investigating an extortion scheme gone awry can only be described as iconic. Her performance won her an Oscar for best actress, but to many Minnesotans, her over-the-top accent was cartoonish and polarizing. “We don’t talk like that” is a common rebuttal, but let’s be honest, we know at least one or two people who do.
When I listen to Allison Janney’s accent in the 1999 cult classic about a small-town beauty pageant, I think of my friend’s stepmom who grew up in a large Catholic family in southern Minnesota. It’s that authentic. As the chain-smoking Loretta, Janney’s way of speaking sounds soothing and grounded, rather than grating, perfected by the slight sing-song in the way she intones, “You guys wanna beer?”
The movie helped launch the career of Amy Adams, who was living in the Twin Cities at the time as an actor at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres. The way Adams says “the bite marks on my ears” nails the “ar” blend as well as Midwesterners’ tendency to use the soft “s” sound in a word ending in “rs,” as SNL’s Superfans do when they say, “Da Bears.”
Critics praised Russell for his depiction of Herb Brooks, originally from St. Paul, who coached the U.S. men’s ice hockey team to a gold medal in 1980. His locker room speech in which he roused his team to beat the Soviets impressed even the actual players, many who hailed from Minnesota, who said Russell accurately captured their coach’s mannerisms and intensity.
Russell said he was lucky to meet with Brooks before production to absorb his voice and inflection. Some of my Strib colleagues disagree, but I thought Russell got pretty close to how an East Sider of Brooks’ generation spoke.
To prepare for her role as one of the first women to work in a taconite mine in Eveleth, the South African native boned up by reading “How to Talk Minnesotan” and listening to tapes of people from the Iron Range. But her accent didn’t come together until she traveled to Minnesota to shoot the film.
“You know what it was that finally made it click?” she told Hewitt. “Being in the cold. That’s when I started to understand why people talk the way they do. It’s like when you go to the South, you understand why people talk slowly, sitting in their rocking chairs in the heat. It happens that way up north, too. In Minnesota, I stepped off that plane that first day, and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s cold. I get why people don’t open their mouths too wide and why the sound is a little nasal.’ ”
Fun facts: McDormand also stars in the drama, and her accent is toned down compared with her appearance in “Fargo.” And six years after “North Country,” Theron would again try on the accent as a Minnesota protagonist, this time in the independent comedy “Young Adult,” written by Diablo Cody.
Her dialect coach gave her a cheat sheet that included the phrase “Barb’s large apartment.” One of her favorite lines in the script was “bite ‘em in the ankle.” She’d practice sounding like a Minnesotan on strangers at the airport, and if she could get away with it, she figured she was nailing it.