Need a spoiler-free answer to a UK accent question

October 25, 2018 3:34 PM

We just finished Season 2 of Peaky Blinders. The character Alfie Solomons has an accent that I'm having trouble putting a name to. Is his accent: 1.) An amalgam/artistic licence thing worked up by the Tom Hardy; or, 2.) An accent that has a specific name (e.g., Geordie, Scouse, etc.), or a regional appelation? I'm asking this question here because Googling for answers has put me way too close to spoilers I don't want to accidentally read.
posted by mandolin conspiracy to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Best answer: It’s East London mixed with formative years in Russia (going by a fan site). Listening to it I’d call it Cockney - mostly, maybe an actual Londoner would disagree with that. Tom Hardy does weird things with accents in general so I don’t know if the distortion in it is what suggests the Russian. He’s also Jewish so there may be an accent specific to the Jewish Community in East London at that period, with influences of Yiddish.

Actually in googling that last point I came across this interesting* article about the Cockney accent.
*YMMV
posted by billiebee at 3:49 PM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: It's definitely a nod to the East End Jewish community whose origins were in Russia and eastern Europe: not exactly trying for historical accuracy, but reminiscent of Lew Grade and even Alan Sugar.
posted by holgate at 4:42 PM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: And, I suppose, to Ron Moody's Fagin in Oliver!, which is considered a wee bit too stereotypical these days, even though Moody was Jewish (north London) and his parents were from Russia and Lithuania. (It was certainly less bad than Alec Guinness's Fagin in the David Lean film.)
posted by holgate at 9:17 PM on October 25, 2018

Not a Londoner but it sounds like a mix of East End and Cockney to me.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:41 AM on October 26, 2018

Response by poster: Just finished the last season. Thanks for the responses, all!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:25 PM on November 25, 2018