Breakout star Wilson rose to fame with her native Australian accent, which makes her decision to abandon it on her new ABC comedy that much more distracting. The ease with which Wilson typically spouts off raunchy, bizarre and hilarious quips is overwhelmed by the unnecessary and unnatural accent. Wilson recently defended her choice, saying she felt she had to make the character American to fit with the Manhattan setting. But isn't New York the melting pot of the world?
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Hannah Ware, Betrayal
Ware's Chicago accent is just painful. But that's not nearly as grating as the lines she and (fellow U.K.-born) co-star Stuart Townsend are forced to utter. Neither of their native accents could save such dialogue as, "With you I started to feel… I don't know the word… magnitude." But letting Sara be English would have made it slightly more bearable.
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Phoebe Tonkin, The Originals
Australian-born Tonkin began practicing her American accent at a young age, often recreating scenes from The O.C.. Unfortunately, all that work hasn't quite paid off. Tonkin's accent is part-Valley Girl, part-Aussie and part-God-knows-what. We wouldn’t be surprised if it randomly took on a Southern twang now that her character Hayley has moved to New Orleans.
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Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Dracula
Why? That's the only word that comes to mind when you hear Meyers' terrible American accent. Of course, the European Dracula is supposed to be faking it, but there's no reason the famed vamp couldn't disguise himself as an entrepreneur from somewhere else in England — or better yet Meyers' native Ireland — when he arrives on the London scene.
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Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife
Very little of Kalinda's backstory is known, but if she's supposed to be American (as we assume), then Panjabi has some serious explaining to do. The British actress' native inflections are all over the place when Kalinda speaks. Of course, we'd never say this to Kalinda's face for fear she'd bring out her trusted baseball bat.
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Anna Paquin, True Blood
As with everything True Blood, the Kiwi actress goes a little over-the-top with her Southern drawl. Unfortunately, it isn't just the regional accent Paquin fumbles over. Anyone familiar with She's All That knows that the actress' neutral American accent is just as bad.
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Poppy Montgomery, Unforgettable
Carrie's accent is just plain confusing. Maybe Montgomery thinks Syracuse is in the South, because her accent wavers between native Australian and random Southern twang. Hopefully she works with a dialect coach before returning for Season 3.
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Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard, The Riches
While Driver easily pulled off a natural-sounding American accent in Grosse Point Blank, she faltered when challenged to do a Southern one on The Riches. As for Izzard, maybe he should just stick to James Mason.
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Ed Westwick, Gossip Girl
Westwick caught a lucky break with Chuck Bass. The British actor's American accent never alters from a flat growl, but that works for the sanguine character, who would be too apathetic to bother with vocal inflections.
10 of 17 Ben Mark Holzberg/Syfy
Grant Bowler, Defiance
The Aussie actor's accent isn't the worst, but it isn't anything to be celebrated either. Throughout Season 1, it sounded a bit robotic (that is, when Bowler's Australian twinges weren't coming out). However, if the cast didn't feature fellow ex-pat Tony Curran doing such a flawless American accent, it's possible Bowler's discrepancies would go unnoticed.
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Clare Bowen, Nashville
Even with her native Australian accent, Bowen has a uniquely strange voice. Add that to her faux Southern drawl and country lilt, and you get one wacky sound. But all is forgiven the second Scarlett starts to sing.
12 of 17 Richard Cartwright/CBS/Landov
Sophia Myles, Moonlight
Both of the drama's leads were fake Americans, but where Aussie Alex O'Loughlin soars, British Myles flounders. Ironically, Myles once said the American accent was easy to master. "With accents, it's kind of like thinking of your voice as an instrument in a band. You go to a foreign city and they're playing a slightly different melody, so you have to tune your own voice into whatever the melody of the specific region is," she explained.
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Alex Kingston, Arrow
Accents aren't genetic. There is absolutely no reason Dinah Lance couldn't be British. But instead, Arrow makes Kingston try to cover up her native accent — and she does a poor job of it. Each word out of her mouth seems contrived and over-thought. That is, when it isn't sounding a tad British.
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Nicola Bryant, Doctor Who
Bryant is a strong contender for worst fake accent of all time. Peri Brown's English accent came and went, and whenever she did seem to sound American, it was from a different U.S. region than the episode before. Though, it wasn't all Bryant's fault. Even the writers couldn't keep Peri's dialect straight, having her say "lift" instead of "elevator," among other major mix-ups.
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Emilie de Ravin, Roswell
Tess was an alien, and unlike Max, Isobel and Michael, she did not grow up in the States, so we like to tell ourselves that de Ravin's accent was purposefully bad to highlight her facade. Fortunately, the Aussie actress has since been allowed to let her true accent shine on Lost and Once Upon a Time to save us from confronting the hard truth: Her American accent really is that bad.
16 of 17 Alan Zenuk/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images
Michelle Ryan, Bionic Woman
Ryan's accent on the Bionic Woman remake was so awkward that she topped a poll of the worst fake U.S. accents in 2008. The unnaturalness of Ryan's accent was brought to light on the series when Jaime Sommers went undercover as an English transfer student (though why she used an Oxfordshire accent instead of her natural London one, we'll never know). Even though Ryan still wasn't speaking in her native tongue, her fake British was far easier on the ears than her fake American.
17 of 17 Warner Bros/ Television/Everett Collection
Joely Richardson, Nip/Tuck
Everything about Julia McNamara was so labored — her relationship with her husband, her brief foray into bisexuality, her numerous affairs — but nothing seemed to take as much work as Richardson's attempt at an American accent. The actress worked so hard to shed her English accent, it was impossible to get the Miami-cool vibe Julia needed.