GH’s Faux Irishwoman Siobhan: Erin Go Brogue!
GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Erin Chambers was born in Portland OR, and graduated from Utah’s Brigham Young University — both of which are a long way from the Emerald Isle, so of course, she doesn’t come by Siobhan’s Irish accent naturally. It’s a skill she picked up at BYU, and honed on the GH set.
Soap Opera Weekly: Are people surprised that you don’t normally speak with an Irish brogue?
Erin Chambers: A lot of people ask, “Is your accent real? If it’s not real is it hard to do? How long are you gonna do the accent for?” A lot of people ask me about that.
Weekly: That means they’re buying the accent, right? That’s a good thing.
Chambers: It’s kind of funny, because some people think of it as such a big deal, whereas for me it’s just part of the character. When I get my lines and start working on them, the accent just comes out immediately. It’s becoming second nature.
Weekly: You don’t have to think about every word before you say it?
Chambers: Once you’ve been doing an accent for so long — I’ve been doing it since August — it becomes second nature.
Weekly: Do you think in that accent?
Chambers: When I do my lines, yeah. When I’m on-set, if Jonathan [Jackson, Lucky] and I are talking — as Erin and Jonathan — I’ll obviously talk as an American. But once we’re doing Siobhan and Lucky, it’s all Irish. I can go in and out of it easily. I don’t think it was like that when I first started. When I started, I really had to concentrate, but now it’s second nature.
Weekly: Is it any tougher on you now that Jonathan Jackson is no longer using his Irish accent?
Chambers: Yeah. And it’s funny, too, because we’ll be on-set and in between scenes we just sit around and talk. Sometimes he does this British accent, kind of a Cockney accent, and I’m like, “Stop it! You’re gonna mess me up!” He does that every now and then. I think he does it just to tease me. I’m like, “Seriously, I’m gonna start talking in a British accent all of a sudden. That’s not Siobhan!” But Jonathan’s a lot of fun to work with.
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