It doesn’t matter if you’re a royal or a Real Housewife, no one can get away with a sudden accent change.
From Madonna to Meghan Markle, revisit the celebs who have been accused of changing their dialect:
The former yoga instructor came under fire in December 2020 amid allegations that she was lying about her Spanish heritage. Hilaria, who is married to Alec Baldwin, later admitted that she was born in Massachusetts, not Spain. She also addressed claims that she faked her accent.
“I was born in Boston and grew up spending time with my family between Massachusetts and Spain. My parents and sibling live in Spain and I chose to live here, in the USA. We celebrate both cultures in our home — Alec and I are raising our children bilingual, just as I was raised,” she said via Instagram. “I am that person, if I’ve been speaking a lot of Spanish, I tend to mix them or if I’m speaking a lot of English I mix that, it’s one of those things I’ve always been insecure about. … Yes, I am a white girl. Europe has a lot of white people in there. My family is white. Ethnically, I am a mix of many many many things. Culturally, I grew up with two cultures. So, it’s really as simple as that.”
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Tom Hanks’ son made headlines in January 2020 after a video surfaced of the aspiring rapper speaking what appeared to be patois on the Golden Globes red carpet.
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Kourtney Kardashian questioned her younger sister when Kendall Jenner posted a throwback video of Khloé babysitting the supermodel and Kylie Jenner via Instagram.
“What kind of accent does @khloekardashian have?” Kourtney commented.
Khloé fired back, “I was waiting for you to chime in and hate on my beautiful accent.”
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Shortly after she made her debut on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in 2016, Dorit’s costar Erika Girardi infamously called out her British-sounding accent by saying, “You’re an American. You were born in Connecticut.” The reality TV star — whose season 7 tagline was “When you’ve traveled the world, you can speak in any accent you want” — explained her dialect during an interview with Bravo’s The Daily Dish in February 2017.
“I think the way I speak is probably a combination of many things. First and foremost, I am married to a Brit who’s got a very, very strong London accent, and I’m sure some of his inflections have sort of rolled over on me,” she said, referring to her U.K. born husband, P.K. “My parents are not American. I was born and raised in America. I did spend a significant amount of time, nearly 10 years, back and forth going to Europe. I spent a lot of time working all over the world and in various places of the world where people didn’t speak English all that well. I had a tendency to over enunciate, so I think at times some of my English is part that and part inflection. And you know being around a lot of Europeans and a lot of Brits, you just become a product of your environment really. That’s who I am. That’s the way I speak. I don’t hear it. My husband doesn’t hear it but it’s definitely become a topic of conversation.”
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Less than two months after Meghan Markle wed Prince Harry, social media users accused the Los Angeles native of speaking with a slight British accent. The speculation started after a Twitter user shared a clip of the Suits talking to a onlooker during public appearance with Queen Elizabeth II in Cheshire, England, in June 2018. “We all had a great day, I think … The sun was shining for us,” Meghan said with a slight voice change after someone told her she looked “gorgeous” at her May nuptials to the prince.
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After showcasing her British accent in films like Shakespeare in Love and Sliding Doors, Paltrow joked about being born in England during her 1999 Saturday Night Live monologue. Years later, the actress, who was in Los Angeles and raised in New York City, was accused of putting on the accent after she moved to England with her then-husband Chris Martin. She told Chelsea Lately in 2010 that her two kids, Apple and Moses, also have “weird accents” after spending so much time overseas.
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Depp, a Kentucky native, has confused fans multiple times over the years for his ever-changing accent. The actor went viral in 2015 for his dialect seemingly changing multiple times during an interview with the Today show. During the appearance, he explained that he often gets lost in his performances: “The last thing I want to look like is myself. I’ve always felt that it was important to escape. I always figured that if I just did the same thing over and over, I’d not only bore the audience but I’d bore the audience.”
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Lohan showcased her bizarre new accent for the first time in October 2016 at the opening of a Greek nightclub. During an interview with the Daily Mail in November 2016, she explained her new dialect: “It’s a mixture of most of the languages I can understand or am trying to learn. I’ve been learning different languages since I was a child. I’m fluent in English and French, can understand Russian and am learning Turkish, Italian and Arabic.”
After Lohan slammed Kim Kardashian by calling her braids “confusing” in January 2018, the KKW Beauty creator retaliated by describing Lohan’s accent the same way, tweeting, “@linsdaylohan you know what’s confusing…..your sudden foreign accent.” Months later, however, when The New York Times published a profile on the actress, the publication claimed Lohan had “no trace” of the new dialect in June 2018.
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The queen of pop, who was born in Michigan, made headlines in the early ‘00s after she was accused of faking a British accent during her marriage to Guy Ritchie. According to E! News, Madonna’s rep responded to the controversy at the time in a statement: “She does naturally pick up on languages and sounds of people around her. It’s certainly not meant as an effect. When she’s back in New York for a while, she gets right into the New Yawk sound.”
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