Austin Butler says he hired dialect coach to get rid of Elvis Presley accent
Austin Butler revealed that he had to hire a dialect coach just so he could get rid of his Elvis Presley accent after playing the late singer in 2022 film Elvis.
The actor made the revelation in an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, saying that he had to ditch it before filming his new television show Masters of the Air, which is set to premiere later this month on Apple TV+.
"I had a dialect coach just to help me not sound like Elvis," he shared. "It was a whole thing."
Austin shared that dropping it was no easy feat as he prepared for his Elvis role for three years. It included method acting, where actors "use their physical, mental and emotional self in the creation of a character."
The movie star noted he only had a week to prepare for Masters of the Air, which is a drama series about the second World War.
"I was just trying to remember who I was. I was trying to remember what I liked to do. All I thought about was Elvis for three years," he pointed out. "And then I had that week off, and then I flew to London, and at that time, it was COVID, so I was quarantined for 10 days. I thought, 'Alright, just pour all this energy into learning about World War II now."
Austin became a hot topic on social media in January 2023 when he accepted his Best Actor award from the 80th Golden Globes. As he delivered his acceptance speech, Internet users noticed that he kept his Elvis Presley accent months after the film's release.
Speaking with Los Angeles Times in the same month, the actor said he found the reactions "funny" because he "[doesn't] even think about it."
"If I was trying to sound like Elvis, I would sound very different right now. I think it’s sort of amusing to me how much people want to focus on this one thing," he said.
"But I’ve had friends who’ve gone and lived in other countries and they come back and they have a French accent or an Italian accent or something like that, or where they’ve gone and lived in the South for a while and they’ve come back. It’s funny how we have these muscular habits that will pop up in ways that we don’t expect," he added.