Coronation Street Blog: Michelle Collins is working on that accent

Monday, 6 June 2011

Michelle Collins is working on that accent

There's an interview with Michelle Collins in Closer magazine, and via this site, we find out that Michelle Collins is working hard to get to grips with the Manchester accent for her upcoming part on Corrie as the new Rovers manager, Stella. Sounds like a bit of an uphill battle, but it's not an easy thing. I, for one, plan to cut her a bit of slack on this one, knowing she's working with a dialogue coach and trying to get it right.

Michelle's first appearance is Thursday, June 16.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: Alternatively, they could have followed the casting policies of 1960 and employed a Northern actress?; 6 June 2011 at 16:51
Anonymous said...: ^ Yes, that would have been preferable - but I'm willing to give Michelle a chance! Just ten days to go until the new family appears.; 6 June 2011 at 18:31
Clinkers (David) said...: Jacqueline Leonard was passed over for the job and she is as northern as a balm cake . . .; 6 June 2011 at 18:43
Anonymous said...: Lets give her a chance. The actress who plays Jane in EE is scottish as was Terry in Emmerdale. This isnt the sixties and although I hear what people are saying I think we should wait till she is on screen for a few weeks- Micky; 6 June 2011 at 22:13
Frosty the Snowman said...: Look at her behind the bar, you would think it is the Queen Vic. I am prepared to give her a chance but I dont liker the fact that she is a personal friend of Phil Collinson and that he obviously puts personal feelings and before the good casting of Coronation Street. Nepotism. The East End swaggering on the preview didnt endear Frosty either.; 7 June 2011 at 07:07
Cobblestone said...: Yes, Jackeline Pirie, who played Linda Sykes/Baldwin also has a broad native Scottish accent, but being an accomplished actress, you'd never have known during her stint on Corrie (and Emmerdale, if I remember aright). The sixties were half a century ago - should we really be adopting the working practices of 50 years back? If an actor is worth his/her salt, they will be able to nail an accent. To restrict Corrie to native northern actors (and I am speaking AS a native northern actor) is a restrictive practice, positive discrimination. If a better southern-born actor loses out on a role to a less adept northern performer merely on the basis of their geographic origen, then that is surely a mistake. The best actor should be employed. I'm not making any claim that Michelle Collins was superior or inferior to her competition (Jaqueline Leonard, mentioned above, is an excellent actor), and I shall watch her with an open mind next week. But we shouldn;t forget that Tony Warren's proscription of southern actors playing northerners was in the context of a much less sophisticated industry that was dominated by the RADA-trained starlets and gritty northern parformers like Albert Finney were only just starting to emerge. Nowadays drama training spends as much time on perfecting various accents as RADA used to spend trying to eradicate them.; 7 June 2011 at 22:16