HBO
HBO’s hit series Task wrapped up its season one run on Sunday night with its seventh episode, the widely-lauded “A Still Small Voice.” The series was the second series that creator Brad Ingelsby set in Delaware Country (Delco), Pennsylvania, following Mare of Easttown.
Just like actors such as Kate Winslet, Julianne Nicholson, Evan Peters, Jean Smart and the rest of the Mare of Easttown cast, HBO’s Task featured incredibly specific accent work, with all of the local characters adopting the local Delco accent.
The most notable example in Task was breakout star Tom Pelphrey — who you might remember as Laura Linney’s screw-up brother in Ozark — who portrayed co-series lead Robbie Prendergrast and consummately inhabited the DelCo native, accent and all.
Dialect coach for the HBO series Task explains how she teaches actors to do the very specific Delco, Pennsylvania accent
In an interview with Variety, Susanne Sulby, the dialect coach for the series, explained how she gets Ingelsby’s actors to master the “strange” accent.
“It’s such a strange accent. It’s the sounds that come from the north, like ‘coffee’ and ‘talk’ and ‘call,’ and then the sounds that sort of come up from the south, like the really strong Rs, like ‘car’ and ‘hard,’ and then it merges. Then there’s also immigration that influences the accent — like, South Philly’s a little different because there are more Italians there,” Sulby explained, before then detailing how she honed in on the accent.
“There’s two different things. There are sounds, and then there are words or phrases that are particular. So the sounds, there’s ‘o,’ like ‘hoagie’ or ‘home’ or ‘don’t,’ or ‘phone.’ And then there’s sounds like in ‘pike’ or ‘night.’ That’s a very specific sound. The other sound that I feel is very specific to the area is the short ‘o,’ like ‘coffee,’ ‘hot dog,’ ‘come on,” she continued.
“I made a little sticker that had all kinds of Delco and Philly phrases on it, like ‘come on’ and ‘home’ and ‘hoagie,’ those kinds of things. The other sound that’s very specific, is the ‘s’ sound, and it’s hard for people to get because it feels too sharp.”
Similar to Mare of Easttown, Task was concieved of as a limited series, meaning the recently concluded season will likely be the last we see of these characters. Based on Ingelsby’s work, however, it wouldn’t be surprising if HBO returns to Delco in the near future.