Millie Bobby Brown first displayed her accent-switching ability in her breakout role as Eleven in hit 'Stranger Things'. Photo: TNS
Millie Bobby Brown is defending her evolving accent, after social media users said she appeared to fluctuate between a British and American dialect during a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Brown, 20, joined the show last Thursday (March 7) to promote her new Netflix film Damsel, during which her British accent was “barely there anymore,” as one TikTok user pointed out.
The former Stranger Things star, who split her time between England and the US growing up, claims the changes people are hearing are totally natural and unintentional.
“I’m an actor,” Brown explained to internet personality Max Baledge in an interview shared Friday. “I grew up in the public eye. I grew up in America. I come to set, and I’m an actor and I adapt, and so I want to mimic other people!”
She also pointed to her fiance, Jake Bongiovi, son of legendary rocker Jon Bon Jovi, whose American accent likely influences her own, even if temporarily.
“I can’t help that when I’m around my fiance, or when I’m with people like Jimmy Fallon, who have a very American accent, I wanna replicate it!” Brown added. “And now I’m in England, I wanna replicate that (accent)!”
“I don’t do it intentionally, and I’m sorry if it offends you,” she continued. “But listen, I’m trying my best! I’m trying my best.”
Brown displayed her accent-switching ability in her breakout role as Eleven in Netflix hit Stranger Things, in which she flawlessly executed an American dialect.
She has also showcased several impressions in previous appearances on Fallon, singing in the style of Amy Winehouse and talking in the voice of convicted con artist Anna Delvey.
While some continue to question the changes in her natural speaking voice, others have defended the actress.
“She code-switches (idk if that’s the correct term in this case) but everyone does this when you have an accent. If you live in a country for so long, you start to adapt to that language like she said,” wrote one TikTok commenter.
“People also forget she spent so much of her childhood and teenage-hood playing and living as an American character her own age,” wrote another. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
