‘One Dollar’ actors work to pinpoint our unusual dialect
Picture, if you can, Pittsburgh Dad as Henry Higgins.
No “rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain” nonsense here. With “One Dollar” shooting in Western Pennsylvania since spring, it has been more like, “hangin’ aroun’ Dahntahn.”
The yinzer patois is a wonderful, terrible thing.
“It’s not a dialect you can pinpoint straightaway,” said Don Wadsworth, dialect coach, voice professor and head of the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama’s acting program. “We know what Brooklyn sounds like; it always has that familiar, almost cartoonish place for us. And we know what that Delta Mississippi sounds like because it’s so iconic.”
For the cast of “One Dollar,” an original series premiering Thursday on the premium streaming service CBS All Access, mastering variations of the accent was no stroll through Schenley Park.
“It’s such an awfully difficult accent,” said John Carroll Lynch, who stars as steel mill owner Bud Carl. “I added the word ‘difficult’ for your benefit; it’s a HORRIBLE accent to do because it’s not any one thing.
“It’s a series of vowel and consonant substitutions that mimic other, more ‘popular’ theatrical accents in the United States.”
Mr. Wadsworth worked with about eight core cast members before shooting began in March.
“First of all, none of the actors came in with any preknowledge at all, and sometimes they went a little more ‘mountainy’ with it, and I said, ‘No, no, no, no, we aren’t going there.’ “
some just a tinge. Socioeconomic class and age were two factors in determining this, Mr. Lynch said.
For Bud Carl, the actor went full yinzer.
“John was like your Aplus student, and I mean that in the sweetest way,” said Mr. Wadsworth. “He took it one step further and created this whole story using these typical Pittsburgh phrases.”
Mr. Lynch’s touchstone monologue — which he recites before shooting — goes something like this:
It so happens Mr. Wadsworth actually knows a mountain accent and worked on the shot-in-Pittsburgh WGN America series, “The Outsiders.” Having grown up in Pittsburgh, he also has a natural ear for all things yinz and its sibling, youns.
His Scottish mother would refer to “redding up the room.” How else would she say it?
There are many theories about what makes up the classic Pittsburgh accent, but a key ingredient seems to lie with Scotch-Irish immigrants. Add others who arrived here, particularly from Poland, Mr. Wadsworth said, and you have “a melting pot turned into a recipe that baked us this amazing dialect.”
“One Dollar” is a maybemurder mystery. It follows a single bill as it changes hands among the citizens of Braden, a Rust Belt town with more than a passing similarity to Braddock. Since Braden is set just outside Pittsburgh, the accent was a must.
“It’s just such a super unusual accent and so specific,” said director Craig Zobel, who is an executive producer as well as the showrunner. “There’s not just one version of it. We had to decide for each character whether we wanted to commit to it, and how to do that.”
Some of the “One Dollar” characters have strong accents,
“And that has everything you essentially have to learn,” said Mr. Lynch, smiling as he took a break from shooting at the Carrie Furnace this week. He added that talking to one of the Teamsters on set helps him nail words such as “arn” for “iron.”
The yinzer accent, he added, has “a bit of Midwestern Chicago in it, a bit of Southern in it and mid-Atlantic, like Maryland ‘O’s.’ And then you have the Boston vowel substitutions. ... So, it gets really complicated.” Mr. Lynch spends his day in the yinzer moment, even speaking off-camera with the accent.
Mr. Wadsworth has coached a wide number of actors in a variety of accents, including Russian, British, Irish and, coming soon for a play, New Mexican. He worked on the Pittsburgh patois with Chris Pine on “Unstoppable” (2010) and with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton for “Warrior” (2011).
The “Warrior” actors took different approaches. Like Mr. Lynch, Australian actor Mr. Edgerton preferred to keep the accent going full time. Mr. Hardy, who is English, only wanted prepping right before his scenes and made adjustments during each take.
Listening is the key, Mr. Wadsworth said. Even those who grew up here not speaking with the yinzer accent, such as Mt. Lebanon’s Joe Manganiello or Green Tree’s Zach Quinto, are capable of pretty good mimicry.
“That blue collar sound will really ground you. There’s nothing phony about it at all. It’s almost, in a way, stubborn, the way it holds you.”
Which is, perhaps, another way of saying, “You can take the boy aht of Pittsburgh, but you can’t take the Pittsburgh aht of the boy.”