Why Doesn't Storm Have an African Accent in 90s X-MEN Animated Series?
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| X-Men (1992) - Storm |
Storm's the first black female in mainstream comics and is a mutant who has the ability to summon and control the weather. Back in the 1990s, the X-Men animated series featured Storm and everyone loves her. She was our first real taste of what Storm would be like brought to life. Interestingly, we barely notice that she doesn't have an African accent either.
In season two of the series, actress Alison Sealy-Smith took over as the voice of Storm from Iona Morris and in an interview explained why she didn't use an African accent either. Alison Sealy-Smith is a multiple award-winning Canadian actress, born and raised in Barbados.
In an interview for Anime Kon 2012 she explained that the producers told her to use a North African accent, but instead went for a Shakespearean tone. She said "nobody went for authenticity at that point." After hearing Morris' audition, she realized "the lady don't sound North African at all."
"I realized they don't want North African." Sealy-Smith said. "They want something that doesn't sound completely twangy and American. That's all they knew that they wanted. They could talk about North Africa all they wanted. So, I made the best decision because what I did was I went in there and I happened to do this kind of voice that came straight off of doing Shakespeare."
The clip is wonderful, but you can skip to her section on Storm at 7:30. She also gets into what it's like as a working voice actor and how to get into the business.
Here's a video of Storm's monologues in the show for a comparison of how awesome her voice is
Do you miss the North African accent? How do you feel about Storm? If you saw the show who was your favorite character?
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Because I've never watched the old cartoons and only the new X-men movies, I didn't know about about the accent. Cool.
ReplyDeleteShe did have a strong voice in the cartoon. I've never watched it either.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten it has been too long.
ReplyDeleteYikes. I need to watch those again. Didn't notice when I was a kid...
ReplyDeleteIt has a very commanding presence Alex and sounds perfect to me.
ReplyDeleteHer origin isn't really talked about in the movies Clarissa, so hopefully that'll change soon.
ReplyDeleteIt had been a while for me too David, but it all came back to me.
ReplyDeleteI would like to point out that Storm is NOT, from Kenya she is actually from Cairo, Egypt Kenya is just where she was when Professor X found her. This is how she was depicted in the 90's cartoon that i remember.
ReplyDelete