Welcome And Guest Spotlight

Greg Staffa 0:00

Joining me today is Joy Ellison, who began her career as a child actor, portraying characters on the Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, Dragnet, and more, before discovering a passion for language and accents. She went on to become one of the Hollywood's most accomplished dialect coaches, helping actors such as Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman, Anthony Hopkins find their voices behind the character. Joy, thank you for coming on today.

Speaker 0:56

Hi, Greg. What a pleasure. Thank you.

Greg Staffa 0:58

What an amazing journey that you've been on.

Speaker 1:02

Indeed.

Greg Staffa 1:03

I am so excited to talk to someone like you. You grew up, your parents were dancers. Is that correct?

Dance Parents And A Normal Childhood

Speaker 1:10

That's correct. So you have to do filmwork.

Greg Staffa 1:12

Tell us a little bit about your upbringing.

Speaker 1:15

Well, it was I was very proud of my parents, actually. They were about both dancers. My dad did a lot of the Fred Astaire films and stuff. In fact, I've got a couple of great pictures where he's right next to Fred Astaire in the old classic top hat film. And my mom was also a dancer, but all the women, they would make them all kind of look alike. So they all had little short blonde wigs or something like that. And so even when I was old enough to take to the movies for them to show me after all those many years, she even had trouble pointing herself out sometimes. So I think that's me. Or no, maybe it was so long before I was born. But no, it's kind of dance royalty, which were um my family's always been very proud of. But that was all way before I was born. And then I had a sister who was 19 years older than me. She was born, and then my dad got out of show business. They both did actually, and then he became a fireman. So when I grew up, I was just kind of middle class Hollywood, grew up in Hollywood, and um he was a fireman. And um yeah, just kind of like uh grew up a regular kid, just lived in the same house all the way through through kindergarten, through high school, and you know, went to Hollywood High and kind of grew up in Hollywood, so I'm pretty much a as much of a native as you could get.

Greg Staffa 2:36

So their performance career background really had little influence then on you deciding to become a child actor?

Speaker 2:44

Well, actually, you know, I think it was sort of my mom's idea. My dad always kind of felt like show business was a little uh, you know, iffy, and you never know how long you were gonna be good at it. And and he sort of didn't think it was very practical, so he got out of it. But my mom kind of always wanted or wished or hoped that maybe I would be interested. And so when I was a little, little kid, I was very, very little, she put me in some kind of baby beauty contest or something like that. I don't even remember that. And um, and then um one thing led to another, and then I got started doing little extra work, acting things here and there. And at that point, it was very different for kids. And even later, when I started doing more principal roles and things like that, I wouldn't say principal character roles, is really what I did. It was really only about the kids just looking like the parents. So if there were some famous actors being cast as the parents, and then they had to have a kid in the show that looked like them, it was kind of based on that. So that's really how it was for the most part when I was a little kid. I did this a bunch of extra work when I was a little kid, which was actually really fun. Got out of school and got to dress up and go to different places and have a free lunch. All this stuff that seems cool when you're a little kid. So I really uh I was very lucky, very, very lucky. I mean, you hear a lot about kids that had a rough time in show business when they were kids, but I was very lucky. My parents were great, normal, and fun, and um, I went to a normal school, and I guess I just didn't do enough of it to have me be one of those kids that got left in a closet somewhere or, you know, sort of isolated somehow with show business. It was it was a really normal kind of childhood.

Greg Staffa 4:44

And did you see it as a job at the time? Was this more of a a fun thing to do after school, or did you see this as a possible future, or is this just let's do this and have fun?

Speaker 4:56

Well, I think it was pretty much, yeah, I think you're right. I think it was pretty much fun. It was, like I said, any excuse to get out of school. And, you know, my parents would say, we're gonna put this money away for you for your college education, that kind of a thing. And and it, but I never really thought about it in a you know, really like a job way, or you know, as a I was actually more of an an artistic kid. I kind of liked to draw. And when I later on when I got into high school, I was really, I was an art student. I thought of myself as an art major. I went to junior college, was an art major first. And um so it was just it just sort of felt like it was something that was always going to be there, which is incredibly naive to think that. But I just thought, well, you know what, if I run out of money, I guess maybe I could act or something. Which is pretty crazy. But but it was I think it was pretty much based in the fun part of it. And if now my mom would say, Okay, you really need to wear the little sailor dress. I said, I want to wear the sailor dress. I look like such a dodo in a sailor dress. She said, Well, you know, that's the deal. I mean, you can we can do it or we don't have to do it. They always gave me the choice, you know, you can do this job or you don't have to do it. I was okay, let's do it. And I do it.

Andy Griffith Set Memories

Greg Staffa 6:21

Nice. Now you were on the Andrew Griffith show, and as an outsider, that is like TV reverence. I don't think anyone has ever said anything bad about the show. As much as it is dated, it also is relevant. I could watch hours and hours of it now. The Mr. was it Mr. Bojangles episode? I think it was Bojangles, the guy in the tree trimmer or the utility guy in the tree that I mean it's just there's so many classic episodes that just are are almost reverent. When you were on that show, you were a little kid, was there at any point a realization, maybe years down, where you're like, I was part of something special, or was it just another acting role that you did?

Speaker 7:10

Honestly, at the time, Greg, it just was like any other thing I did. Um, I mean, it was cool because it was a very nice crew and everybody was really nice. People were always nice to me as a kid, though. I mean, I never had anybody say anything strange or weird or boss me around or anything. It was and you know, they come up and they say, Oh, let's count your freckles, or you know, would you lose a tooth? Or, you know, they're always like trying to kid banter kind of stuff. I was making fun. And but with fun, in fun, you know, making it in fun. And I mean at the time, no. I didn't think it was anything special. But then as I as I got older, of course, and now of course, there's there's a thing called Mayberry Days that they have every year in North Carolina where everyone comes together. And it's just like Star Trek. Everybody knows every episode, and they know what the name of one character's dog was, and how many buttons were on their sweater. And I mean, it's amazing the trivia that they go into. It was a little strange. I did get an invitation to go to Mayberry Days, and I've been there a couple of times. And when I first went, first of all, I thought they'd made a terrible mistake. I couldn't imagine that they really wanted me to come because I'd just been this dopey little kid. And I was in a few episodes, but I didn't have any major roles or anything. And and they were so kind and sweet and lovely about it, and they would, you know, then there'd be these questions like, well, when you were in this scene, did the camera banana around you? And and I thought, oh my gosh, they don't understand. I was seven. All I wanted was lunch. You know, there was I didn't know about cameras or lights or anything. I just did what I was told to do. Stand here, take three steps, lean in, say your line, you know, the whatever. But now I work with kids and it's much more sophisticated. I mean, I'm working on dialect things with kids all the time. And they're they're intelligent and they know about the character, and they look at the arc of the character throughout the project. I mean, it was a whole different world. Kids are very, very sophisticated now.

Greg Staffa 9:30

So I guess I'm not asking you my next question, which was on that second episode, you did the camera banana around you or not. Uh, that's where I was gonna go, but apparently that wasn't the question to ask. Umard, was he? I mean, he's another one. The show not only was very reverent, but I don't think anyone has said a mean thing about Ron Howard uh years. You got to see him at a very different perspective, a different age. What was that like? And was there anything again? I know you're seven, but was there anything unique or special about him that realizing now as an adult that he was on to big things?

Speaker 10:14

Well, again, it was just another actor in the in the project that I was in. But also people would say, Well, you're still friends. I was we were never really friends, I'd I would say. I mean, he would he was one of the principal actors. There's a group of principal actors, of course, as we all know, that were the whole family and the characters and the town and everything. And then I myself and other people would come in as character actors for a day or two here and there. So we sort of drop in and then drop out. And I mean, we didn't, you know, when you're a little kid at some point, you at first there's like ew girls, you boys, you know, that kind of thing. And so there wasn't, it wasn't like we really hung out together. I mean, the thing I do remember when I got a little bit older is thinking I kind of admired the fact that he was so present in that piece. He wasn't, he was, wasn't dismissed. And that was the thing that I loved about doing that kind of work is that kids weren't, you're not dismissed. I mean, there's you have a point, there's a point in you being there, you have a job to do, you have a character that's important to this scene at this moment, however small the role is. And um, you know, I didn't mostly kids just go around this and you get kind of dismissed as a little kid, but in this, it sort of made you feel like you had a purpose. And I admired that he did, especially, and he paved the way, of course, because everybody was really nice to him, and there was a family atmosphere, you know, it was a very, as I recall, a very happy set. Probably a lot to do with the fact that there was a family situation and he was a kid, and everybody was trying to be, you know, just happy and relaxed about things.

Japanese School And Sound Curiosity

Greg Staffa 12:06

Now, as a young child, you also attended a Japanese school. Is that correct?

Speaker 12:14

Well, I did. My best friend, who's still my best friend, who was with yesterday, she's Japanese and Chinese. Her mom and my mom were good buddies and in the PTA and whatever when we were in grammar school. And she was going to a Japanese school on Saturdays. And uh to try to learn Japanese because she grew up here and didn't speak Japanese. And so I don't know whose idea it was. We all thought it was a good idea at first. And I went for a while, and it was the only non-Japanese kid in the whole school. It was on a Saturday, and of course you're going to school all week. The last thing you want to do, Greg, is go to school on Saturday, too. So I went for a while, and then I was just like, oh mom, I really want to play. I want to do something else on a Saturday, me. So I kind of got out of it.

Greg Staffa 13:04

Was that exposure to that culture and language? Is that kind of what opened the door to your interest in becoming like a dialect coach? Is that just hearing something so different? Was that the beginning of what you would become?

Speaker 13:20

Well, I think that's very perceptive of you. I think it did. I think it planted a tiny seed somewhere. I think a bigger seed was planted a little bit later. If you want me to riff off that direction,

Mexico City And Finding Spanish

Speaker 13:34

I can do that. It's uh one day my dad came home and he said, Okay, we're taking a family vacation. We're going to Mexico. And I guess I was probably about 10 or something. And we're like, oh, Mexico! Oh my God, that's another country. Oh my gosh, so exciting. What? Oh my gosh. So, and you know, Mexico from Los Angeles is about two hours. It's very close. But we still were excited about it. My mom and it was just the three of us. He said, But we're gonna have to learn some Spanish before we go, because people speak Spanish there. I was like, oh, wow, okay. And I think probably a little bit in my mind, I thought, well, I took Japanese, you know, maybe I can learn some Spanish. And and he taught us the worst gringo Spanish, like bonus dias and gracias, and and and you know, just like the worst accented stuff because it's all from a book back then, right? You'd have a Berlitz book that said quesadilla, and they'd spell it out like K-A-Y-S-A-D-E-E, quesa d, you know, things like that. So that's the only way you knew how to pronounce anything. Anyway, we got to Mexico City, and and I was very proud of the fact that I had learned this Spanish with my father, and I said to someone, um, uh, hola, buenos dias. And the man said to me, Ah, muy bueno, pero es buenos días. And I went, ah, buenos días. And the man went, ah, mira, escuche, está muy bien. And so I think I whatever it was in me that could hear whatever my dad had taught me and how I needed to bend it to make it sound like the real way it was supposed to sound. I got so much kind of support, encouragement from the lovely people that we met. And then my by the end of our few weeks in Mexico or whatever, my parents were saying, Will you tell the taxi driver we need to go here, Joy? And will you tell, ask the waiter if we can have more of this? And and I was so proud of myself for trying to do it and figure it out. And of course, people are so lovely down there and so sweet and and generous and encouraging, and they were all they were all so happy. I was trying to speak Spanish and they would help me. And I think I felt like I had a superpower, something even my parents couldn't do as well. And so that really stuck with me. I couldn't wait to take Spanish later on in class, which we had in junior high then at the time. And then later on in college, I just I took every language I could get my hands on. And but I was not a very diligent grammar student. I loved the sound of it. I would sit in classes and I'd listen and I'd imitate the teacher, and then we'd soon realize I had a decent accent. So they'd move me to the front, or I'd, you know, take a seat in the front and and I'd learn the sounds and I'd record it and I'd you know, banter, and the teacher would use me as an example of how this is supposed to sound. And again, I was kind of encouraged that way. But then when he had to buy the book and sit down and do the the grammar, I go, yeah, yeah, I think I'll drop this class and I'll take another one when I was in college. You could do that. And so I would stay long enough to get the accent and then run away. And then later on, I studied other things more, and I lived in Germany, so I learned German and I've been you know hacking away at Spanish for years, but I I love languages, I always have.

Collecting Languages And Family Roots

Greg Staffa 17:14

I was gonna mention that you went to Hamburg, or you lived there actually, from my understanding. At what point did you realize that you were kind of collecting an arsenal of of language between going, you know, doing a Japanese school on the weekend to going to Mexico and realizing that you did you realize at a certain point that you were collecting, you know, maybe not fluent languages, but you were connect connecting enough to have conversation in different languages. Was there a mindset of like I'm starting to get a wide range here? And at what point did you realize that this could become a career?

Speaker 17:50

I absolutely did feel that. That's a lovely way to put it, an arsenal. I wish it were strong enough to say that. But I did feel that, and especially the freedom I had in college, like I said, to just be able to enroll in these classes anywhere, anytime I wanted to. In fact, the college that I chose, I chose because at the time they had Swahili, and I really wanted to learn that. But then by the time I got there, I guess only three people had signed up and they couldn't afford to keep the teacher for the class. So they dropped it. But I went on and I was taking Italian and German and French and all these languages at once, which is not a smart thing to do because it's tricky, you get them mixed up and whatever. But I did really, thanks for saying it that way, Greg. I really did appreciate the idea that I felt, I guess it felt a little bit like a power to be able to communicate at least a little bit with somebody. And I still feel that way. Sometimes if I'm in an Uber or a Lyft or something, and I'll find out where the person's from, and I can, you know, I can at least say thank you in Chinese or, you know, something in Russian or some sort of little thing that I've picked up along the way. I love that. I love that ability to be able to to kind of jump in and play with things and ask people questions. I'm fascinated by people's names. I looked at your name, I wonder, is that Italian stuff?

Greg Staffa 19:18

It is not as far as I'm aware. I just, oddly enough, I just started within the last three weeks, started looking at my family history. And it was thought to be Italian, but it is went a very different way. I don't have it in front of me, but there's a lot of Czech in my family, I think it was. But I'm still learning about my family history on my one side, and it took us a way different route than I was understanding where it would. So still digging, but uh yeah, that's something in the last three weeks that I just started exploring, but it was not the direction we thought it would.

Speaker 20:03

Fascinating when you get into it. Yeah.

Greg Staffa 20:06

It is. I I mean, not to go too much off topic, but uh I started for whatever reason, I never really cared uh up until about three weeks ago. And then I was bored and started digging in and reali figuring out who my grandparents were and their great grandparents, and I found a photo of my great-great great grandfather. And at first glance, he looked like a grumpy old man, but there's a photo of him, and there's a software program that I was aware of that you can put a picture of you and a picture of him, and it make lets you connect the dots like where his eyeballs are, he matches to your eyeballs, and then it morphs, and so it slowly morphs from his picture into your picture, and you can see the differences and stuff like that, and his face never changed. It was so weird that between his face and my face, for a great, great, great grandfather, our face, and I couldn't see it at first, but the morphing thing it nothing changed in the face. The ears changed a little bit, the shape of the head changed a little bit, but the whole face. So I'm like, okay, apparently he is uh my relative.

Speaker 21:22

How fascinating. Wow. Very cool.

Shyness Stage Training And Dialects

Greg Staffa 21:26

At what point? I mean, dialect coach, is that I mean it sounds like a fascinating job. How do you like you can't just walk up to Tom Hanks and say, hi, I'm a dialect coach, I'd like to help you. What kind of was your training? How do you get your I mean, because you've done some amazing actors and actresses, how do you build that reputation? What was kind of the process of becoming a dialect coach for such influential Hollywood stars?

Speaker 21:55

Yeah, it's a it's a big question, and I would honestly say that every Every other coach I know probably has a slightly different version for what however they came to it. I mean, uh, some people were actors to begin with, some people were were more academics and they got into it that way. I think most of the coaches that I know over the years kind of may have started as actors in that way and have theater school training. So just to go back a second, when I told you I was an art student, so I was an art student at this junior college, and I had finished the art program there, and somebody said to me, Well, now what are you gonna do? And I said, Oh, I'm not really sure. I'm gonna do, I thought I made a joke to somebody and said, I'm gonna want to retire at 30, having done medical package design, which is kind of an in in-house joke, meaning, you know, medical package is like a white box with a red line around it. You know, there's nothing to do. And they said, Well, what um, what are you gonna do until then? I said, Well, I don't know, I guess maybe I'll act or something. And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. And I said, Well, I don't know. I did a little bit of acting when I was a kid. Maybe I'll just do that until I have enough money to go to art school or something, add it all backwards. And they said, you know, usually it's the other way around. Usually somebody's day job is art and uh and they what they really want to do is act or something like that. And they said, Have you ever taken an acting class? At that point, I said, No, not really. And actually, I was really, really super shy as a kid. I was in class, I would never raise my hand, answer questions, and I was really super shy. And as an art student, you're very isolated, you're still shy. You get to just grunt at people that you might meet in the hallway or whatever. And somebody said, Well, you know, this is a this school has the greatest theater department of any school on the West Coast for a junior college, and it was LACC. And it did have that reputation. And I thought, well, maybe I should go take an acting class if I'm gonna do this thing once in a while or whatever. And I went over there and it's a full program. It was a big deal. I got into it, and my whole world completely changed. My social life changed. I had to force myself to get up, which terrified me. I could get up in front of a camera, never a problem. But to stand up on stage and say stuff, I was just terrified. I shake and I sweat and awful. And in fact, the first semester the teacher came to me and she failed me. She said, you know, I'm sorry, but I can't pass you because you never came to class on the days you were supposed to get up on stage. Fair enough. So she said, you know, maybe theater is just not your thing. Maybe you should stick to television. And the way she said it, I kind of thought, oh, I don't like that. So I kind of like scratched the ground and I said, okay, this is stupid. I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna do it. And I'm forcing myself to get up on stage, and I did it. And I did the full program and I learned a lot. And within that process, one of the classes, of course, is speech and voice. And then as one of the later classes is dialects. And you're everyone learns these certain number of dialects and you perform them in scenes and whatever as part of the curriculum. And I kept finding that people, it was really easy for me. And people would come to me and they'd say, you know, you're really good at that Irish dialect. Can you help me with this? And and hey Joy, can you help me with this thing? And what am I doing wrong? And it sort of started there, and I didn't even know there was such a path as a dialect coach. I didn't even know that thing existed as a job. But I had a good year, obviously, and kind of started doing that just casually. And then I uh finished all that. I went to another school in San Francisco, a great school called ACT. And I had an amazing teacher there, Tim Monik, who is pretty much well respected as the grand poo-bah of all dialect coaches, uh, still working today. He's brilliant and wonderful. And um, I'm sitting in his class, and there's a group of about 10 people around, and we'd be going through sounds, the phonetic sounds, kind of, you know, technical stuff. And I'm sitting there and I'd listen to people, and I was really, really interested in this minutiae, which is nothing, nothing very technical or tedious ever really interested me much. But some guy would say, do the wrong sound. For example, Tim would say, Okay, Joe, so say this sound. And I'd listen, and in my mind, I'd think, you know, if he lifted his tongue in the back, maybe he'd get it. And then Tim would say, Okay, Joe, try it again. Now lift your tongue in the back. And I thought, oh, I knew that. I knew that. I knew that. So it kind of it kind of fired something up in me that I felt like, wow, this is something I really dig. I really love figuring out, being the detective on why that sound doesn't work there and why it works here. And I was always listening to people. And when I went to school in San Francisco, I got a job um for 10 minutes as a as a tour guide. And I loved it because again, I could pull out these little words I had gathered along the way from all these other countries and things like that. And I I really loved listening to different people with their accents and making little mental notes and imitating things, and you know, it just it was sort of a lot about the sound. So I I took those classes, I was ACT, did that, came home, and sort of thought, you know, had to be an actor and got involved in a theater company and we did a lot of work like that, and I coached people in a theater company and things like that. And then, and then I met a guy who was German, and I just uh decided to move to Germany. I mean, I was doing a lot of other jobs. I was training horses and uh working horses and stuff, and and um met this guy and moved to Germany and uh just sort of figured I'd do that. And of course, when I got there, I had to learn German. So I took a German class and and got more interested in speaking German and that sort of a thing. And one thing led to another, and the marriage sort of fizzling apart. You know, he's a good guy. I'm a good guy. He just we just kind of jumped in too quickly, and I I got there and I was there for a few years, and I just suddenly went, What am I doing? I don't know if I'm I'm not happy here, what's happening? And a friend of mine who is a oh, another wonderful dialect coach, Jessica Drake, who had said to me early on, she said, Why don't you, you know, come and work with me uh in my classes back in LA? This was before I left. And I said, Oh, you're crazy. Nobody can make a living at that. I kind of want to do that. And she said, Oh, just come to one of my classes. And I went one day on a Saturday morning to her dining room table in her little apartment in Hollywood. And there were all these people sitting there going, Man, Ran, can, Dan. I thought, oh my God, shoot me now. I don't want to do that every Saturday morning. Forget it. So I go off, go to Germany, do this. Now, Jessica was on a film in Berlin. I was living in Hamburg, and she calls me and she says, Look, do you think you could come for just five days and help me on this film? I don't have time to work with this actress. She needs help. And if you could possibly manage to come, I think it would be really great. And she knew me, obviously, from before. And I at the time my marriage is, you know, like I said, kind of getting a little dicey. And I thought, yes, get me out of the house. I'll be there. So I went to Berlin and uh turned out to be Isabella Rossellini, who is one of the great, wonderful angel people in the world, and uh still a dear friend. And she said, we did some work, we worked on her dialogue and stuff, and she said, Oh, please, please, can you please stay for the rest of the summer while we finish this film? I'll get us a flat. You can, you and my me and my daughter and our dogs, we can all live together in Berlin and have a great summer. I said, Yes, yes, how fast can I say yes? So I went back to Hamburg, got my dog, came back, spent the summer with her in in Berlin. We finished this movie, and then she said, Can you go on the next one with me? Can you go with can we go to Prague? And so she kind of dragged me around Europe for a couple of years. And the minute I was on a set as a dialect coach instead of an actor, uh, was just like day and night. I uh I mean, I had been doing as an actor little character parts and you know, it was sort of come in for a day and then now you're done, go away, and that sort of thing. It was pretty thankless kind of work. But as a dialect coach, people were very respectful. The actor was very appreciative. People, you really have a kind of a skill and a niche that nobody else really does. And I was, I suddenly felt like I was really being part of a team and making a difference. And that's one of the things I love about my work is I'm a team player. I'm um I'm an Indian, not a chief. And I I like to, you know, be part of the whole process and a great film with a great director and a script and actors. There's nothing like it. You just feel like you're part of this wonderful thing that's it's all coming together. And I felt valued and empowered and all that great stuff. So that's kind of the short version of the history of it. So I came back to LA after being over in Europe and got an agent. Yeah, I have an agent, and uh, she just handles dialect coaches and and work comes in uh from various directions. It can come from a production, which it often does, looking for dialect coaches, and they may ask for different resumes and who do you have available and who might be appropriate for this project or whatever? Or it could be an actor that requests you you've worked with before. A lot of lot of lot of options. So does that kind of answer your question, or did I go too far off?

The First Big Coaching Break

Greg Staffa 32:53

No, you did, and you jumped to my next question. I was wondering, I'm I was gonna ask, you know, is this a tactical process? Who initiates it? Like, let's just take Hugh Lori for a moment. Americans today are still shocked if he does an interview that he doesn't sound like his house character. Is that the type of coaching that we're talking about? Is it more subtle that you do how what is like no which sorry?

Speaker 33:21

I just missed sorry, just missed the first part of that. Which who which character were you talking about?

Greg Staffa 33:25

Hugh Lori.

Speaker 33:26

Oh, Hugh Laurie, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Greg Staffa 33:28

He's just the most notable one in my mind. You know, he played House.

Speaker 33:32

Yes, yes, yes.

Greg Staffa 33:33

Even to this day, someone will hear an interview for a new movie he's in, and they're like, oh my god, he doesn't sound like house. Is that the kind of the degree that you were talking about when you're talking about I mean you're talking about language, you're talking about dialects and stuff like that. Is that the length that you're talking about, the degree of of changing? Are you is it more subtle? And tell us a little bit about just what that process is. You kind of hinted of you know who initiates it, whether it's production or or director, but like how much does the the character go into what he's playing? What is your kind of research going into what you do?

How Accent Work Really Happens

Speaker 34:11

Oh, I love the research. Yeah, it's it has a lot to do with it. And it's that it's a full rainbow of all of the things you said. It can be something just as subtle as we're bringing you in because this guy is supposed to be from uh Oklahoma, but his Texas is so twangy that we feel like it's distracting from his character. So it's a very similar accent, but you might just pull it back just a little bit so it sounds a little less country or twangy or something because that may not fit the character. Because at the at the end of the day, Greg, I mean, characters need the accents, right? Not the actors. And there's, I mean, the actors do because they're performing it, but it's the character that you're you're working with and you're basing the research and all the work that you do to develop that. Quite often I'll get a call from somebody out of the blue and they'll say, Oh, I have an audition, and they said, just do southern. Well, I said, Well, do you is there any way to see where in the South? Because that's a vast difference. And just a very quick story, it's so silly. But I was on working on a film on Homa, Louisiana, and we were doing, yeah, I guess we were doing, I think we were doing Alabama, Alabama, anyway, Alabama accent. And I'm standing on set. Someone comes over and they says, So, um, so you're the dialect coach. And I said, Yes, I am. And they said, Well, I just wanted to ask you, did you happen to work on this movie? And um, and I can't even remember, it was so many years ago, whatever movie they said. And I said, No, actually I didn't. And they said, Ah, well, good, because I thought those accents were all over the place. And I just thought, oh boy, they sure needed you on that. And um, I said, Oh, well, you know, sometimes they don't even have a coach and um it's hard to tell. And we had a little chit-chat, and then this person went on. Next day, um, sitting somewhere on set, somebody comes over and said, So are you the dialog coach? I said, Yes, I am. And they said, and I thought they were pulling my leg. I said, uh, they said, um, did you happen to work on such and such a film? It was the same film that the person that the day before had said. I said, Okay, I'm looking around my shoulder, like, okay, who set this person up? What is this? And she said, Well, I just want to say that those people must have really done their homework because my family's all from that place and they were dead on. I thought those actors were really from that place. I couldn't believe it. You guys must be really good if you do that, you know. So you it's like you can never please anybody in the South. So the the it used to be with all accents, actually, many from many years ago, 20 years ago or so, that it was a little more specific. You could be really pretty regionally specific about things. Now people move around so much and with the internet, and there's so many changes, and and people moving and mixing in different families and things like that. You get a lot of mixture in the accents. It's hard to find really pure accents, but sometimes it's really subtle like that. Sometimes it's uh we do a lot of a lot of work, what used to be called accent reduction, which isn't really true because it's still an accent. We American accents, we have accents. It could be someone who's from another country who needs to have an American accent. Of course, depending on where they're from and how strong of an accent they have, sometimes it's almost impossible if unless you have so much time, if you have a year to work on something, then maybe you can kind of wrangle in this accent to make it sound close to American. But it's very tough. It's very tough. I mean, you have to think about, I mean, what if you decided to change the way you walk? Just think about it, after you've been walking for 30 years or however old anybody is. You get every time you get out of your car, every time you'd get out of bed, every time you get out of a chair, you have to tell yourself, okay, I'm gonna walk this new way. I'm gonna I'm gonna walk with my shoulder like this. Or, you know, I mean, there's a process until it becomes so natural to you that you do that every time. And we talk a lot more than we walk, especially in LA, that's for sure. And you just think, well, I've been picking this word up off a page in my brain the same way for all these years, and now I've got to change it. So it's a little bit of a brainwashing process. Of course, phonetics are absolutely invaluable. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I mean, it's not the kind of thing that most of us get in school, naturally, phonetics. So if you get it all gets down to time. If you have a generous amount of time, which you used to have in old movies, you a lead actor would get eight weeks of prep, and he'd have to learn how to ride a horse or how to use a sword or shoot a gun and get the dialect and learn how to dance and you know, all of this kind of stuff. There'd be this great long preparation period, and it was lovely because then you it would just sort of fit into this slot of things that they had to accomplish in that eight weeks. And then generally the coach is on set. That's usually how it works, depending on the budget. And um, and then it's just a matter of kind of correcting. So if it's a British person and every time they said water, they said water. So you'd have to go in and say, Don't forget, don't forget that R. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The R and water, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they know it. It's just something that you've done enough that you can just sort of go in and do a slight subtle change to it, and it brings it back into where it needs to be. But there can be all kinds of things. I mean, I've been called in on sets with someone, with people who uh for some reason suddenly production doesn't like their accent and they have already been shooting. They were cast and they've shot a fair amount of the role already, and the production says, no, we don't like that. We think she sounds too this or he sounds too that or whatever. And then you have to kind of go in and be the bad guy, like you're the police coming in, and the actor probably feels insecure or like they are not doing their job right. And that can be a tough, that can be a tough call. We have to come in and sort of gently massage the situation to make sure that the actor feels comfortable and you know, kind of wrangle things around. That's the toughest. Yeah, boy, sorry, I can really riff off, don't I?

Greg Staffa 41:02

No, you're good. I like the story that you told of you know the one person saying the accident was awful, the other person saying it was right at home. Um being in central Minnesota, you know, we have movies and TV shows like Fargo, and they'll do something where you know Hollywood comes to the Midwest and they they try to sound Minnesotan, and you're like, oh, you know, that's how they see us. And sometimes you get it right, and other times you're like, that's what Hollywood thinks we sound like, huh? It is based on like where you're from and what you're used to that some of it can sound perfect, and other people think it sounds silly.

Speaker 41:42

Absolutely. Well, that's a really good point. I mean, Fargo is a great example of I mean, when Fargo first happened, it was really like the accent was another character in the movie. It was a one of the first times I ever really felt that way. Um, a friend of mine, I think, did the first the first Fargo film. I can't remember which one it was, that we really felt that maybe it was um oh, I can't think I can't think of the name of the movie, one of the first Cohen brothers. And it was so it was it really enhanced all the comedy. And it was slightly elevated. And as a coach, you sort of hear where I might probably a native speaker wouldn't have said that that way. But what it did was it created this kind of wonderful innocence along with a lot of these incredibly ridiculous and extreme characters, which is uh kind of an art in itself where you can, and I love doing stuff like that where we take something and think, well, how can we make this accent not only be authentic as and honor it as well as we can, but maybe give it just a little twist so that makes it funny? Or or you can find maybe the the hidden pain in someone's character, or that maybe they're hiding something by using an accent or not using an accent, or there's all kinds of stuff that's that all that theater background for me, I find invaluable. I find that that's the stuff that I love to use now with actors is oh, well, let's take a look at this. So you know, your character lived in Minnesota, but his but his grandmother was Czech. So he probably had these elements in his in his speech. And maybe he was maybe he had a really tough grandmother and his his mother died when he was younger. You know what I mean? And you just can create a whole kind of scenario around around someone's background. And even, of course, you have to use the script as the Bible for that. I mean, if it says in the script that this guy is from here and this and these are the influences or whatever, then you've got a roadmap in front of you there. But if you don't have that, you can also be a little creative. And sometimes actors really, really dig that. Most of the time they do. They they find that it gives it something that they can hold on to, is giving their character depth and sort of and a strength in a way to carry on with not only the dialect, but their interactions as their character and the piece. So it can be

When An Accent Becomes Comedy

Speaker 44:36

really fun that way. One time I worked with an actress who was auditioning for a play on Broadway. Or actually, she got it. She was casting a play on Broadway and she was doing German, and they wanted her to have the most extreme comic version of this German accent as she could possibly have. And we talked about it and she had good comic timing anyway. And I said, you know, what if we make her so she can't say her R's? And so her name was Gretchen. So let's so she said Gretchen. Like her name was Gretchen. So whenever there was an R, it kind of went to a W. So if you said good guif, you know, some something like that. And when she did it with her comic timing, it was so funny. And the director loved it, and she actually got nominated for a Tony for it. And and it was an older play, and she just brought this. She was really strong on stage, and she just had this little twist to it, and it you know, I think it really, really added to it. She loved it.

Greg Staffa 45:52

No, one of the stories Matt Damon has talked about often, he did a movie called Rounders, and in it ja is uh actor John Malkovich. And I don't know if you've seen the movie or had anything to do with that movie, but uh it's a card movie, and John Malkovich he was Matt Damon was saying he came to set the first day, and they have this scene, and John Malkovich opens his mouth and he had this wild accent. And Matt Damon was sitting across from him, just blown away because here's John Malkovich talking, and they go action, and he has this accent, and it was just the wildest thing the way he talked, and Matt Damon tells the story much better than I can. But how much of your job is your communication with production? It almost sounds to some extent, it's like a fitting room, you know, where a woman's shopping for a wedding dress and she comes out, and you go, nope, that's not quite it. And then you go back in and comes back out, and you go, no, no, you don't. Is there a lot of communication with production saying, here's the voice we're working on? They say, Can you tweak it a little bit here? Or do you say, you know, here's the final voice? How much of that kind of communication goes on that production kind of sees what's going on, or is there not enough time to do that? And just you work with the actor, the actor says, Here's here's the voice you're getting.

Speaker 47:19

Very perceptive question, Greg. And it it's uh again, it's soup to nuts, you know. If you sometimes, I mean it's very, very often that I'll get a call on a Friday and they'll say, Can you be in Romania on Tuesday? It's like, oh, yeah, sure. Okay, yeah, I can do that. Passports valid. And uh, and you get there and they've decided they've got they've maybe had a last-minute recast, which can happen, and you just don't have any time. And you have to just really quickly commiserate with people and try to come to a compromise. Sometimes it is it's a very not too often, I'm sorry to say, in a way, it's a very specific vision for the director or production, which you know, the more specific it is, the more fun it is for me. And the the more specific it is for the actor, usually it's better too, because the choices are very specific. Yeah, sometimes you you very rarely get enough time ever. That's just the bottom line of it.

Period Dialogue And Authenticity Fights

Speaker 48:27

But you I mean, I had not long ago, I had a I had a Zoom interview for a big project that was a period project where in the within the the eight episodes, the first two episodes were done in the native language, and then on the in with in the third episode, the people begin to speak English. And there's a transition, and then from then on they start as it transitioning slowly, and then they begin speaking English, speaking English mostly. So that's tricky because the writing has to support that. I mean, if you're just learning a language that's so different, and in this case, coming from a language that wasn't even written, their language was never written down, it was just handed down spoken ancient language, and uh suddenly they're learning these words for things. And I don't know if you've learned other other languages, but usually you learn things like you learn water, uh hand, nose, sit me, you, come, go, very basic things to begin with. You can't say things like, um, and if it's you know three or four hundred years ago, you wouldn't say, Hey, wait a pivot, man. You know, it's like, you know, there's things we just don't say. In this particular interview, I was on a big Zoom call and people were interviewing different dialect coaches, and uh all these little faces on the Zoom, I can see them, and they're they're listening to me, and a couple of people are asking questions, and and they said, Well, how would you handle this transition? I said, Well, first of all, it's really important, like I'm like I've just said, the language has to support the process of someone learning a new language. And I said, just like I said to you, I don't know if anyone has learned a new language, but you know, you start with very, very basics. You don't start with past and future, you don't start with the complicated grammar structures. You learn the names of things and you uh make the sentences simple. And and um and I said, and you know, you got to be careful not to say man and okay and stuff like that. And a couple people giggled, and a couple people I saw them take their pen and their head go down like they had to make a note of that. And I thought, oh, that's not a good sign. Because you would think everyone would know not to say man or okay or things like that that are completely out of the period or the culture of that project. I mean, just recently, I don't know if you've seen the Odyssey, but there was a lot of controversy about that. Number one, it was a choice that they use American accents, which sort of surprised me, honestly, when I saw it. You know, you get used to it after a while. Much of a convention goes on, you get used to it. But then someone said, Dad, and I thought, oh, that just doesn't seem right. And then at one point, and nobody else caught this, but some other character at some point reached around to help someone, and they said, You're okay, you're okay. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is the Odyssey. This is Homer. He would never have said dad, he would have never said okay. And then, of course, people say, Well, they're trying to modernize it, or they wouldn't have been speaking English anyway. I mean, there are a lot of things that people will use to rationalize their vision, but uh, you know, I mean, I've been on lots of big projects like that, and usually it's a compromise that's based in someone in production thinking, well, the lead actor can't handle horses and swords and accent, that kind of a thing, or something like that. And uh it's a compromise that I'm sorry to say kind of ruffles my feathers. I feel like, you know, a lot of kids learn about history through movies and television and things like that now. It's not really through school. So I I always feel an obligation to be as authentic and and honest about things as I can with a process. Well, does that make sense?

Greg Staffa 53:04

It does, and once again, you saw my next question. So I'm glad we are wrapping up. My next question was actually going to be when you watch a film, whether you had an involvement or not, is it easy for you to kind of disconnect yourself and enjoy the movie? Were you able to enjoy the Odyssey? Or does the inconsistencies drive you nuts? And uh, I think you just answered that very uh specifically. Uh so I want to find another question here.

Speaker 53:34

Well, I still enjoyed the movie. I mean, I love big swashbuckling sort of adventure things, so I did enjoy the movie. I just, you know, I think looking at it, I would like because I've been in that, I've been in that room, you know, where those decisions were made. And I've I've been a part of those sorts of things. I you could just sort of see how it all evolved. But I um I would have made other choices. Yeah. And I've had to fight for some of those choices on other projects, right? Try to justify to production. Please, please understand this is gonna distract if you do this. Please go for this, please, please let us do it. And you know, I fight for it as well as I can. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don't. But yeah.

Budget Cuts And Being The Scapegoat

Greg Staffa 54:19

I'm gonna insert a makeup question since you saw my question uh before we go and then have one question after that, and then we're finished. But doing a dialect coach, it often seems to be the butt of a joke. Uh, because when it works, it works and no one notices. But when you have an actor doing, you know, American actor doing a British movie, and the first thing people say is, you know, woes with the accent. George Clooney as a joke sent Meryl Streep a bunch of CDs of dialects and he signed it from Brad Pitt as a joke to her. Dialect coach kind of puts themselves out there because, like I said, if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it almost becomes silly. You know, we've all seen movies where the dialect or the the accent was so just goofy that it just took us out of it. Is that frustrating? Is that a personal thing? Is that I wish I had more time? How do you kind of react to that being kind of the front line so often of how we anticipate things? I mean, you're not the first I mean you're a dialect coach, so of course you're drawn to the Odyssey, but you're not the first person to make that that statement of the language wasn't right, the dialect wasn't right, you know, it it wasn't just professionals like you. Does that kind of putting yourself out there, does that ever get to you, or are you just is that part of the job?

Speaker 55:49

Uh both. It's uh it does get to me, and um and sometimes you just gotta suck it up. I mean, I'm I'm pretty far down on the uh you know the evolutionary ladder of of uh of production. So I'm pretty much just kind of a soldier doing my job. And uh sometimes, you know, it depends. It's just it every single project is so different. It just depends. I mean, if if you have a sympathetic director and produ and producer, or maybe one producer is sympathetic and others are not. Some people have better ears than others, and and they, you know, you've got one person in your corner who'll fight with you and for you for your opinion on something, then maybe it'll happen. And sometimes they're just so overwhelmed and over budget, and the last thing they want to think about is dialect. And, you know, and it's a tough time we're going through now, of course, Greg. You know all about this, I'm sure. That it just things just don't have the time and the budget that they used to in general. I mean, there are these great big projects like the Odyssey, and thank God they they still exist. I mean, those are the things that employ so many wonderful, talented people, crew people, and things like that. So they're wonderful that they still can crank one out every so often, but it's less and less. And we tend to be one of the things that gets cut. So I do a lot of prep now. I work with people, I prep them on things, but that's like uh, you know, teaching somebody to swim and and you you prep them and you're in the pool, but then they've got to go out and they've got to swim the English Channel without you, and you don't know if they're gonna make it or not. I mean, it's it's it's tough. It's very tough. And it's unfortunately kind of scary for a dialect coach because you think, oh my gosh, that person's not ready. They're never gonna do this. And then sometimes someone in production will just be savvy enough and they'll go, um, you know what, maybe this, maybe this actor is struggling too much with this. Maybe we should just let them use their own accent. And then they just can the whole thing and they do that. And it does sort of hurt because you feel like you've put work into it. But in all fairness, again, getting back to time. I mean, if you had a year to prep something, you'd feel a lot more comfortable pushing that person out into the deep end. But if you've only had a week with them, you think, forget it. He's never gonna do it. She's never gonna get this right. And then sometimes, of course, if there's any ad-libbing or if there's rewrites, the scripts are rewritten all the time, especially in television. A lot of that. And there's a lot of there's a lot of times that you get scripts with um, you know, writers may not like hearing this, but you get scripts and the actor doing the accent just has trouble saying those sounds together. Like there's too many, why do we wait when we went, we went corrupt, too many sounds all together that just sound funny, and you think, you know what, maybe if we change that word to this instead of that, means the same thing. And and all of a sudden they can say the sentence more clearly and it works better for the accent. Well, things like that come up too, where you have to kind of bend the the actual writing a little bit to make it work. But it is very tough. It is that's the toughest part of the job, actually. You sort of sussed it out that an idea that what you have to sort of set it up with production, and everybody's got a different idea, and of course, the more cooks in the kitchen, that kind of thing. But it always helps to have a really strong director with a strong vision because then it comes down to him or her good leader. Interesting.

Who Joy Sees In The Mirror

Greg Staffa 1:00:01

And wrapping things up, I went a little late and I apologize for that.

Speaker 1:00:04

Um sorry, I'm just rattling on.

Greg Staffa 1:00:06

No, you're you're great. So, my final question is one I asked of all my guests. You have a long career. It is hard to say Joy Ellison and not mention the Andy Griffith show. Uh, it's hard to say Joy Ellison and not mention some of the famous people you've been. Uh, even though some of these have been years ago and some of these are more current, we associate you to those things, right or wrong. But when you get up in the morning and you look in the mirror, you know, you splash a little water in your face in the bathroom, look in the mirror, who is it that you see?

Speaker 1:00:41

Wow, what a question. Um I don't know. I kind of think I see that 10-year-old kid kind of playing with voices and accents and things like that. Uh I don't know. If I ever grew up, Greg, I kind of, it all still feels like play to me. And I um, you know, on a good day, of course. We all have our struggles, like I just said a minute ago in another question. But I don't know. I uh I my happy place is my work. It really is. I uh when it's all cooking, I mean, being on set is great. Uh I'm I'm getting old, and I I I have to admit it, a couple years ago I was working on something and I was 12 hours hanging off of a slippery, muddy mountain, getting wet and trudging miles in the mud and thinking, you know, okay, I'm too old for this. But I do love, like I said, the teamwork on a set. But even now, which is mostly what I do is prep and Zoom work, I love it. As soon as I get on one-on-one with somebody on Zoom, I just love my work. I love working with them and finding the things that work for them. Everybody's different. Any teacher knows that. Everybody who teaches anything knows that people learn in different ways. And it's it's always kind of a wonderful feeling when you hit on whatever works for somebody. You're like, something isn't working, something isn't working that way, something okay. They're this kind of a person. Okay, then you can figure it out. And you when you hang up that Zoom call and they are grateful and they've grown and they've learned something and they're excited and they want to do more, and they're there's a there's a pretty great feeling. Nice.

Final Thanks And Farewell

Greg Staffa 1:02:40

Well, Joy Ellison, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure to be able to talk to you, and I appreciate you taking your time out of your busy schedule and look forward to seeing what the future has for you.

Speaker 1:02:52

Thank you so much. What a pleasure! Beautiful questions. Thank you so much, Greg. Nice meeting you.