Austin Butler says he’s finally ‘getting rid’ of Elvis Presley accent
We may hear a little less conversation with that twang.
Austin Butler finally admitted he wants to stop talking like Elvis Presley now that he is almost done with his “Elvis” press tour.
“I am getting rid of the accent, but I have probably damaged my vocal cords with all that singing,” the actor, 31, said on Britain’s “The Graham Norton Show” Friday.
He added, “One song took 40 takes!”
Butler, who portrayed the late King of Rock and Roll in the 2022 Baz Luhrmann-directed biopic, has been dragged online over the past year for continuing to talk like he is still in character.
Just last month, the Oscar nominee accepted the 2023 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture — Drama using a cringey Southern accent that drove the internet wild.
“Has Elvis’ ghost taken over Austin Butler? Sir blink twice if you need help #goldenglobes,” one person tweeted.
“Austin Butler’s voice ain’t sound like that on ‘The Carrie Diaries,’” someone added, referencing the CW series that Butler starred in from 2013 to 2014.
“So that fake Elvis accent is just Austin Butler’s voice now, huh #GoldenGlobes,” another wrote.
But Butler asserted at the time that he was speaking normally and not putting on an accent.
“I don’t think I sound like [Presley] still, but I guess I must because I hear it a lot,” he told reporters. “I had three years where that was my only focus. So, I’m sure there’s pieces of him in my DNA and I’ll always be linked.”
The “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” star previously explained that the twang could have been triggered by all the time he spent preparing for his role as Presley.
“You spend so much time obsessing about one thing, and it really is like muscular habits, your mouth can change,” he told Elle Australia last summer. “It’s pretty amazing. I know that I’m constantly changing. Check in with me in 20 years when I’ve played a lot of roles. Who knows what I’ll sound like!”
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Even Butler’s voice coach called the actor’s accent genuine and speculated that it could remain “forever.”
“What you saw in that Golden Globes speech, that’s him. It’s genuine, it’s not put on,” Irene Bartlett told ABC Gold Coast. “I feel sorry people are saying that, you know, it’s still acting, [but] he’s actually taken [the voice of Presley] on board.”
Bartlett reiterated that because Butler spend so much time perfecting Mississippi-born Presley’s voice, it could be hard to shake.
“Because of COVID shutdowns, he was working on it all the time, and it’s difficult to switch off something you’ve spent so much focus [and] time on,” she said.
Butler’s ex-girlfriend Vanessa Hudgens later hilariously reacted to the voice coach’s claim.
Responding to Page Six’s headline about her former boyfriend’s “genuine” accent, the “High School Musical” star savagely commented, “Crying.”
Hudgens, 34, had originally encouraged Butler to try out for the role.
“Last December, we were driving along, and we were listening to Christmas music, and then an Elvis Presley Christmas song came on,” she recalled on “Live with Kelly and Ryan” in 2019.
“He had just dyed his hair dark. He’s a natural blond, and I was looking at him, and he was singing along, and I was like, ‘Babe, you need to play Elvis.’”
The actor was later dragged for referring to his ex as a “friend” while telling the story about how he was pushed to audition for the part.
“The month before I heard that Baz was making the movie, I was going to look at Christmas lights with a friend, and there was an Elvis Christmas song on the radio, and I was singing along, and my friend looked over at me and goes, ‘You’ve got to play Elvis.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s such a long shot,’” he said. “A couple of weeks later, I was playing the piano.”
Butler later admitted that it was, indeed, Hudgens who inspired him.
“I was with my partner at the time,” he told the Los Angele Times. “We’d been together for so long and she had this sort of clairvoyant moment, and so I really, I owe her a lot for believing in me.”
The former couple were first romantically linked in 2011 and dated until January 2020.
Butler has since moved on with Kaia Gerber. Meanwhile, Hudgens is reportedly engaged MLB star Cole Tucker, whom she’s been seeing since 2020.