Austin Butler said he is finally parting ways with the “Elvis accent” he developed to play the King of Rock and Roll and couldn’t seem to shake during the press tour.
About a month before the 95th Oscars, where he’ll compete for Best Actor, Butler spoke about the physical toll his performance took on him.
“I am getting rid of the accent, but I have probably damaged my vocal cords with all that singing,” he said on Friday’s episode of “The Graham Norton Show.” “One song took 40 takes.”
The extensive training he underwent to sing as Elvis “destroyed my voice a bit,” he said, leaving him with a noticeably lower, raspier register.
Since the film premiered at Cannes last summer, social media users have hotly debated the authenticity of the “accent” he’s displayed in public appearances, saying he’s still trying to sound like Elvis. The Anaheim, California, native, who “[tries] to stay off social media,” first got wind of this criticism through his publicist.
“It really made me self-conscious for a second because I thought, ‘Am I being phony? Is this not my voice?’ And then I thought, ‘I’d have to think consciously to not talk how I am right now,’” he said.
“When I was really questioning I thought, ‘OK, for one thing, I’m older now. I don’t, maybe– sometimes I have a Southern twang, but I’m not, I don’t think this is Southern,” he continued. “If I tried to sound like Elvis I would sound very different right now.”
“Don’t do it,” Norton jokingly warned him.
Butler volleyed back with a grin, “You’d have to pay extra for that.”
Nonetheless, a new accent era may be underway. In November’s “Dune: Part 2,” he’ll play villain Feyd-Rautha. His co-star Dave Bautista teased the transformation in a recent interview with USA Today, saying: “I don’t know who this guy was, but it’s not Austin Butler. It’s not Elvis. His voice is different, his look is different. Everything about his demeanor is terrifying.”
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