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Fake Australian - TV Tropes

  • ️Fri Mar 04 2016

This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

So you've got an Australian character in your work. Unfortunately, the performer in question is American, British, or something else that isn't Australian. Don't worry - as with foreigners trying to be American or British, all that's needed to sell the illusion is an Australian Accent.

The specific accent is usually Broad Australian; in reality, Broad Australian is one of several different Australian accents, but it seems to be the only one which appears in popular culture, leading to a self-perpetuating occurrence of Small Reference Pools where most foreigners wouldn't recognize any other Australian accent.

It should be noted that, to Australians, many attempts to imitate an Australian accent end up sounding like London Cockney instead.

Compare Fake Brit and Fake American. Subtrope of Fake Nationality.

Examples

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Films — Animation 

  • FernGully: The Last Rainforest: The voice cast is fully American, despite the film taking place in an Australian rainforest. Even the non-fairy cast.
  • The Rescuers Down Under: Tristan Rogers is the only Australian in the film, as the voice of Jake. There's speculation that George C. Scott's Percival C. McLeach (the Big Bad) is just an American poacher hiding in Australia given the way he talks.

Films — Live-Action 

Literature 

Live-Action TV 

  • The Blacklist: The season 10 episode "The Whaler (No. 165)" has American actor Christian Conn doing a very good Australian accent.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The "The Enemy of the World" takes place partly in Australia, and while a couple of the Australian characters are played by real Aussie actors, the major part of Donald Bruce is played by English actor Colin Douglas.
    • "The Wheel in Space" features a multinational space station crew played almost exclusively by British actors. Among them is Eric Flynn puts on an Australian accent to play communications officer Captain Leo Ryan.
    • In "Inferno", the Australian drilling engineer Greg Sutton was played by British actor Derek Newark.
  • Frasier: A girlfriend of Daphne Moon's is an Australian model in Seattle - but played by an American actress whose Australian accent is every bit as shaky as Daphne's English one.
  • The Good Place has Michael pretending to be a human in Season 3, and puts on a very poor "Australian" accent which somehow doesn't arouse any suspicion. Lampshaded by Janet (unconvincingly) referring to said accent with "Uh huh. Flawless"
  • H₂O: Just Add Water stars the South African born Cariba Heine as Rikki Chadwick.
  • M*A*S*H. John Orchard (English) has portrayed two Australian characters on the show: anesthesiologist Ugly John in Season 1 and MP Muldoon in Season 8.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus (five English, the other American) did this several times, most famously with the Bruce Sketch. In it they play a group of stereotypical Australians all named Bruce who all teach in the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolloomooloo.
  • Only Fools and Horses: Nick Stringer (English) played two Australian characters — the guy Del sold the dodgy Cortina to, and Del's old friend Jumbo Mills (who was actually English, but having lived Down Under for two decades he'd basically become an Aussie).
  • In the Poirot TV series adaptation of Agatha Christie's Peril at End House, British actors Jeremy Young and Carol MacReady play Australians. Although, as in the book, they turn out to be Fake Australians in-universe.
  • Press Gang has British/American Gabrielle Anwar as Sam. However, she doesn't even attempt an accent: the only indications of her being Australian are the Aboriginal flag on the window of the room for the graphics department (of which she is the head) and her once using the distinctive Australian slang term 'drongo'.
  • In The Thorn Birds Mini Series, Australians Justine and Dane are respectively played by Americans Mare Winningham and Philip Anglim. Other Americans and Brits play Fee and most of the Clearly children, who are from New Zealand. The main cast only has ONE Australian in it.
  • Top of the Lake: Elizabeth Moss fretted about perfecting her Australian accent for the show and spent six months studying it, to the degree that Jane Campion had to reassure her she'd be fine. She won an Emmy for the miniseries.

Music 

  • For his album Streets I Have Walked, American calypso singer Harry Belafonte sang the Queensland version of "Waltzing Matilda" with a Broad Australian accent.
  • Kate Bush likewise performed the title song on her album The Dreaming in an Australian accent.

Video Games 

  • Bugsnax has Elizabert Megafig, who speaks with a noticeable accent despite being voiced by an American actress Helen Sadler.
  • Crash Bandicoot: Dingodile has consistently been voiced by Americans (with the exception of Crash Team Racing where he's voiced by the late David Anthony Pizzuto, who was Canadian). The entire cast effectively can be considered this (with Dr. Neo Cortex sounding like a rare Cultivated Australian example), as the series is largely set in an Australian archipelago.
  • Far Cry 3: Irish actor Julian Casey as Depraved Homosexual Australian Psycho for Hire Bambi "Buck" Hughes.
  • Mortal Kombat': Australian villain Kano is rarely ever portrayed in the series by Australian actors. In the 1990's film, he was played by English actor Trevor Goddard, in Mortal Kombat 9 and Mortal Kombat X, he's voiced by American Michael McConnohie, and in Mortal Kombat 11'', he's voiced by Anglo-French JB Blanc.
  • Overwatch: Americans Josh Petersdorf and Chris Parsons as Australians Roadhog and Junkrat, respectively,. Petersdorf doesn't attempt an accent, but Parsons does.
  • Team Fortress 2:
    • The Sniper is voiced by John Patrick Lowrie, an American born in Hawaii, and raised in Colorado.
    • Similarly, Saxton Hale is voiced by French-British actor, JB Blanc. The game's accents are all designed to sound like caricatures of what 1960's Americans would imagine these accents to sound like.
  • Ty the Tasmanian Tiger: The titular character was voiced by Australian voice actor Stig Wemyss in the first game. However in the second and third game, he was voiced by Greg Ellis, a British voice actor. Shazza the Dingo was voiced by American voice actress Debi Mae West in the third game.

Web Video 

  • In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Jeice is voiced by GanXingba, an American, to heavily parody the heavy Aussie accent he had in the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z. The original performance also counts, but Christopher Sabat actually did live in Australia for a while.

Western Animation