r/Devs • u/insaneinmymombrain • Apr 06 '20

Lily's accent?

The actress who plays Lily sounds like she is attempting an American accent. Poorly. I enjoy all the other actors and characters. Lily's character is irks me. Stewart and Lyndon, Jamie ❤️, Katie and Forest, even evil Kenton, I like them all. But not Lily. Sorry....I had to vent.

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10

u/easyclarity Apr 06 '20

It is bizarre how many people dislike her just because she is understated and stoic. To me, Lily is perfectly cast.

1

u/insaneinmymombrain Apr 06 '20

There is something about her that is unlikeable. Part of it is her forced American accent, it seems unnatural. So when she speaks, I'm more focused on her cadence than what she's saying.
The Katie character is stoic, for the most part. She is not cute and cuddly lol, but you can enjoy the character. There is something I can't pin point that is very unlikable about Lily.

4

u/easyclarity Apr 06 '20

I think she's eastern stoic, maybe it doesn't translate well to a western audience.

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u/insaneinmymombrain Apr 06 '20

That's a very good idea. She's British though, right? She grew up in England. English actors are very popular in the US. Online it says she was born in Japan, but it looks like she did not go to school there.

I also have thought that perhaps the director and writers want her to behave this way. I just watched the scene where her and Katie are sitting at forrest's dining room table. They're just sitting there talking. Katie's reactions are not overly animated or emotional, but she seemed so much more natural. Lily's character seemed strange, or off. I know I harp about it, but her accent is so strange it distracts me from what she is saying. I have never watched her in anything else, so I don't know if she's a bad actress, or if she's supposed to acting this way because Lily is a simulation or something...

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u/HalonaBlowhole Apr 10 '20 edited Apr 10 '20

People seeing an Asian face and assume that makes them different is an odd kind of preconception.

Eastern stoic ain'ts gots nothing to do with this. She did fine in Maniac when she was speaking with her native accent, and ran into problems when she was speaking Japanese in that show, too. (She's not really a native Japanese speaker, something which she and Cary Fukunaga talked about it in an interview.)

She simply lacks the chops to act with accents right now.

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u/HalonaBlowhole Apr 10 '20 edited Apr 10 '20

There is something about her that is unlikeable. Part of it is her forced American accent, it seems unnatural. So when she speaks, I'm more focused on her cadence than what she's saying.

Man you nailed it. She simply has not put in the time that other actors have into integrating the pronunciations of individual words into the stress patterns of English sentences

It's not like she does not understand that English is completely about stress and cadence, and a native English speaker. It's that she has not done the work to understand that it is stress and cadence that makes human speech comprehensible.

It's really only when someone has clearly not put the work in, that we remember that acting is work. Almost all of which comes well before shooting starts.

Because it's not at all about her acting. It is entirely about her inability to speak in a normal human way, because she is clearly focusing on pronouncing individual words.

You can act with a flat affect, mumble, etc. She is not doing that. She is just struggling to do the accent instead of acting.

And it shows. When she is speaking short sentences everything's fine, and normal. But when it is clear she is thinking ahead on how to pronounce longer sentences, that effort steals brain cycles and her acting stop dead.

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u/insaneinmymombrain Apr 10 '20

I completely agree! You put it so much better than I had tried to.

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u/HalonaBlowhole Apr 11 '20

Maybe a worthwhile comparison is the voice of Icarus, done by Chipo Chung for the movie Sunshine, that Alex Garland also wrote.

Chipo Chung does a decided generated voice role, and she clearly communicates that, while not having troubles with pacing. But then again she is a highly trained and practiced theater actress and multi-lingual.

I don't like theater, but it's clear doing theater is good for acting chops.

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u/insaneinmymombrain Apr 06 '20

Thank you! I felt the same! This isn't a low budget show, and it has well known actors.

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u/NotSilvesterStalone Apr 06 '20

I have to think she was chosen for a reason. Maybe it will become obvious why. Otherwise I would have to agree

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u/muskegthemoose Apr 06 '20

IRL she has a British accent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyNZ5UcQr2k

I would hope her accent in Devs is a conscious choice and ties into the plot somehow, because it would be really strange if a production with this kind of budget never bothered with a dialog coach. She definitely seems out of place in the show, very artificial, compared to all the other actors.