Why does your talent need a dialect coach?

Because you want them to sound great and be easily understood.  I'll get them comfortable and confident in the new accent so they don't need to think about it and can focus on what makes them great: their acting.  I'll be their ears on-set so they don't need to listen to themselves, and neither you nor your director will need to focus on their accent. 

To quote a recent client (who was preparing to play Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a test for Steven Spielberg): "I was working on the accent and the voice for eight or nine hours a day and had completely run up against a wall. When my manager suggested a dialect coach, I thought, 'What can he do?'  But after my first session with Joel, I was on-point and knew exactly where I needed to take it."

Want your pilot to get a series order?  I have a perfect record coaching TV pilots: All nine I've coached have been picked-up to series. These include The Night Shift and Awake for NBC, Memphis Beat for TNT, Snowfall and Mayans MC.

I can coach your actors in any dialect of English;  if I haven't coached it before (and I probably have), I can research it and be ready to teach it quickly.  In addition to the credits listed on my resume and IMDB, I've coached thousands of private sessions in a huge variety of accents; my library of breakdown sheets of accents taught is approaching 400.

Versatility and authenticity are my strengths.  I taught Viola Davis and the cast of the hit film, The Woman King, West African accents, and coached Ms. Davis to sound like Michelle Obama for Showtime's The First Lady, in addition to coaching the entire cast of the "Michelle" segment of this limited series. I prepped Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Kathryn Hahn and Casey Wilson in New York accents for The Shrink Next Door on Apple TV+. I dialect coached the live shot of the Broadway hit musical, Come From Away, for AppleTV*, as well as coaching all five companies of the musical worldwide. I coached Kevin Costner for his Emmy Award-winning performance in Hatfields & McCoys (West Virginia) and for The Company Men (Boston).  I coached multiple accents for Disney Interactive's It's a Small World project, including Swedish, Scots, Maori, South African, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Colombian, Chinese, Japanese, French Canadian and many others.  I created the accent of the future for Will Smith and the entire cast of After Earth.  I've also coached Anil Kapoor (Slumdog Millionaire) on 24, (an invented "Kamistani" accent) and Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol and Ken Jeong in a Vietnamese accent for The Hangover.  For Numb3rs, I taught Shawn Doyle a Pakistani accent and for Showtime I taught Mexican actor Luis Chaves an Afghan Pashtu accent on Sleeper Cell.  I helped Ryan Phillippe with his Dutch accent in the ADR studio for Five Fingers, coached African accents on the set of Without a Trace, English and Irish accents for Heroes and coached Jennifer Garner in an Atlanta dialect for Alias. Productions I've coached include The Birth of a Nation, Escape at Dannemora, Honey Boy, The Tax Collector, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Freed, Crown Heights, The Runner, The Crazy Ones, True Blood, The End of the Tour, Fury, Boardwalk Empire, The Night Shift, Mayans MC, Snowfall, S.W.A.T., 24:Legacy, Second Chance, Brothers in Atlanta, The Originals, Gotham, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, True Blood, Lucky Stiff, 24, Outsourced, Memphis Beat, Heroes, Syriana, Lost, Bobby, D.O.A., Black.White., Lackawanna Blues, The Shield, CSI: Miami, D.O.A., War Stories, and Little Black Book. I've worked with actors like Jamie Dornan, OT Fagbenle, Ricky Martin, Jada Pinkett Smith, Robin Williams, Eric Lange, Nnamdi Asomugha, Armie Hammer, Nate Parker, Kristofer Hivju, Jackie Earle Haley, Jason Segel, Sophie Okonedo, Coleman Domingo, Aunjanue Ellis, Aja Naomi King, Roger Guenveur Smith,Shia LaBeouf, Linda Hunt, Dennis Farina, Christopher Lambert, Roger Daltrey, Nicolas Cage, Alfre Woodard, Jessica Chastain, Ken Jeong, Jason Lee, LL Cool J, Kelly Osbourne, Emily Bergl, Mike Myers, Chris O'Donnell and hundreds of others.

If your actor has a foreign or regional accent, I'm expert in helping them sound American.  I recently coached Irish actor Eoin Macken in the lead role for Nightflyers and NBC's The Night Shift, and coached Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård in a British accent for True Blood. I coached English actor Sonoya Mizuno for DEVS. I coached Australian actor Miranda Otto to sound American for 24: Legacy, for whicjh I also taught English actors Kat Prescott a Chechen accent and Ashley Thomas a Black American sound. I've often coached English actress Julia Ormond: in Son of the South (Alabama accent); The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; The Wronged Man (Louisiana accent); CSI: NY; Che: The Guerilla; Kitt Kittredge; and Surveillance. And English actor Jason Isaacs in Awake for NBC and Nine Lives (which Roger Ebert called "the best screen performance of the year").  I also coached The Who's Roger Daltrey in five different accents plus the Spanish language, for CSI; Canadian actor Justin Chatwin for War of the Worlds; English actors Samantha Morton for Expired; Jim Broadbent, Max Minghella and Sophia Myles in Art School Confidential (a review called their American accents "impeccable"). I also helped Australian actor Simon Baker sound American for Land of the Dead. I've worked with actors like  Anil Kapoor, Sacha Dhawan, Chris Geere, Jamie Dornan, Jim Jefferies, Rhys Darby,  Ken Jeong, Rob Kazinsky, Wilmer Valderrama, Joel Edgerton, and hundreds of others.

As a former actor and director, I offer a patient, nurturing coaching style, adaptable to any actor’s strengths and abilities. I don’t merely teach the necessary sound changes for a given dialect, but also give the actor the tools to explore their character’s accent within the given circumstances, and give them the ability to make the accent stronger or weaker, depending upon the specific demands of the script. My approach works quickly, reducing rehearsal and production time.

Rates

On-set/location rates for film and TV: Rates include my detailed research, digital sound samples of native speakers, all written material and customized coaching with your talent via Zoom or at your location, where I'll notate their text in the new dialect and email them mp3 links of our work for review. Please contact me for a specific quote for your project.   This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  Office: 818-879-1896