Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman.
So I have a confession that I need to get off my chest, and I’m bringing in my friend, SciAm’s very own Allison Parshall, to help.
Allison Parshall: What is it, Kendra?
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Pierre-Louis: I’m obsessed with the TV show Heated Rivalry.
Parshall: Wait, me, too! [Laughs.]
Pierre-Louis: The romance, the hockey, the tension …
Parshall: It’s so good!
Pierre-Louis: The yearning!
Parshall: The Russian? I mean, one of the things that both you and I have talked about so much is how the American actor Connor Storrie, who co-starred as the Russian character Ilya Rozanov, pulled off speaking so much Russian and perfected his accent.
Pierre-Louis: Yeah, it was shocking, and to help us understand the linguistics behind the hit TV show, we talked to Heated Rivalry’s Russian dialect coach, Kate Yablunovsky.
Thank you for joining us today.
Kate Yablunovsky: Thank you so much for having me.
Parshall: Can you tell us a little bit more about dialect coaching? Like, what is it, and how did you get into doing this work?
Yablunovsky: Well, dialect coaching, I specialize specifically in Russian, Russian, Ukrainian, and it’s about preparing an actor to speak with as much of an authentic accent, which it’s not always what it sounds like. It’s not always just to be authentic. Sometimes, actually, it’s the opposite; sometimes it’s to take the perfection out of the accent so that the character feels authentic.
This is something that I got into very unexpectedly. It started when a smaller production in my city, they had some Russian-speaking characters, and they couldn’t find a local Russian dialect coach. And I was casting that film, and they were like, “Maybe you should coach them as well.”
And I jumped into the water, and it took me on a journey because I learned so much through that very first experience. And I had to start to develop all kinds of techniques and exercises and try to understand speech therapy and everything that goes into it to be able to get [the] best of a result for them as possible.
And from there on I went to work on [a] few other productions and started working with actors. And I think it was, like, a mutual evolution for [the] actors and for myself.
Pierre-Louis: Before we get into the work that you did on Heated Rivalry, what are some of the hardest sounds in Russian for English speakers to pick up?
Yablunovsky: Well, it’s funny because when I coach actors to speak Russian there’s always this comment that comes up that, that they say, “Oh, my God, you have so many sounds.” [Laughs.] “You have so many sounds.”
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.]
Yablunovsky: And I joke with them—I’m telling them, like, “Okay, I’m gonna open you up to a whole new world of sounds.”
It’s usually the vowels that kind of, you know, in English, they would feel like they’re two letters, but it’s actually [a] one-letter vowel that you have to pronounce with other consonants. So there’s the sound “ы,” like when we say the word “ты.”
Pierre-Louis: E.
Parshall: E.
Yablunovsky: Yeah. [Laughs.]
Parshall: E.
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.]
Yablunovsky: That’s a hard one. [Laughs.]
Now, imagine, the way we say in Russian “you” is “ты.” So imagine now adding T to the sound “ы.” It’s “ты.”
Parshall: So it’s, like, one of the hardest vowels for English speakers to pick up, but it’s—is it one of the most common?
Yablunovsky: Very common because every time we say “you,” you know, ты, is a very common word in speech.
“Yo” as well. So yo is a vowel, and if you wanna add consonants before it, you have to make it sound like they’re merged, not to make it sound like you’re saying the consonant and the vowel separately.
Parshall: Is there an example of that one?
Pierre-Louis: That sound, “yo,” isn’t that in “I love you”?
Yablunovsky: I love you in Russian is: “я тебя люблю.”
But here’s an example. I said, “я тебя люблю,” which has the vowel “ya” in it. So “ya” is similar. Like, you have to—in the word “тебя” you have to merge the “b” with the “ya” and say “ti-BYAH,” not “tib-YAH.”
Parshall: Mm.
Yablunovsky: This is the example, right? Not “tib-YAH,” but “ti-BYAH.” And this is something that’s very hard for non-Russian speakers to learn.
Parshall: I noticed this when I was trying—like, even Ilya, one of the main character’s names, is that the case with his name, too? Because I feel like English speakers are often pronouncing it like “Il-ee-YAH” rather than the way it’s supposed to be. But I don’t know if I can do the way it’s supposed to be.
Yablunovsky: No, no, actually, that one is very serious. It’s “Il-YAH.”
Parshall: Oh, okay. That one’s easier, then.
Yablunovsky: And if we go into, into accent coaching, it’s just that the l in the name Ilya is softer in Russia. So it’s not “IL-yah”; it’s “Il-YAH.”
Parshall: There’s so many nuances that you kind of don’t know until you get into it.
Yablunovsky: [Laughs.] No, totally. It’s a whole world. But, you know, a lot of actors kind of misunderstand Russian, so they come with this kind of idea that it has to be aggressive.
Parshall: Mm.
Yablunovsky: But it’s actually not aggressive at all. It’s not harsh. It’s compressed.
Parshall: Can you say more about what you mean about compressed?
Yablunovsky: Yes, it—it’s just that the stresses are not about making it, like, harsh or aggressive, right? It’s just about restraining a bit the expression, restraining a bit the emotion behind the words. But it’s still lyrical, you know? It’s still humorous. There is still warmth. There’s irony. There’s all kinds of things. It’s not just, like, this kind of a monotone, harsh expression.
Parshall: I did wanna ask a little bit about what you were brought on to do specifically for Heated Rivalry. Like, what was the challenge that you were presented with when you started? Is it pretty normal for the kinds of work you often get as a dialect coach, or was it a little bit out of the ordinary?
Yablunovsky: So what was out of the ordinary on Heated Rivalry is just the amount of Russian that an American actor had to do. I was lucky to work with Connor Storrie because he was incredible and he really took the challenge, like, head-on. And it was very stressful.
But I was hired on the project before Connor was cast, so I just looked at the script, I saw all of this Russian, and to be honest for a moment I got nervous because the timing was short. We were, like, a couple of weeks before principal photography, and it’s a very short time to start practicing Russian at that level for such an amount.
When Connor got cast, when we had our first call, I told Connor, you know, “If you’re willing, I’m willing that we show up every day and work on the Russian, and that’s the best way that we’re gonna make it work.” And he totally went into it, and we were meeting every day, including weekends. And we kept on working even after the principal photography started, you know, so on days off or after the shoot, on breaks, whatever. We kept on working as much as possible.
Pierre-Louis: What were some of the struggles that Connor encountered? Like, what was he really good at, and what did he find especially challenging?
Yablunovsky: So the beauty with Connor is that he came with a very good base. So first of all, he speaks French, too, and that’s a great tool because it gives him another tool bag of other pronunciations. If someone speaks only English, they are only aware of English pronunciation. French pronunciation is very different from Russian, but it still stretched his elastic, right?
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.
Yablunovsky: It’s like his muscle was already stretched as far as working with accents.
And then he was always very interested in Russian culture. He was listening to Russian music, Russian rap. It was fun to work in that way ’cause we would exchange, like, music ideas and cultural anecdotes. So he had some insight into the Russian culture, and that helped a lot.
I think the challenges with Connor were not the usual challenges that I’ve had with other actors I’ve trained. The challenge with him was just how much he had on the plate because he had a very short time. He had to not just learn Russian—and we’re talking about not only learning Russian but eventually memorizing it, putting a character on it, acting it out and everything—but he also has to prepare all the rest of the script, all the English parts of it. He had to learn to skate. He had to prepare for hockey. You know, there was just so much.
So I felt like, with Connor, it’s not that he had challenges, necessarily. The hard sounds that we talked about before, everybody struggles with it, and we always had to work a little bit extra on it. But I think he was, like, miles ahead of anybody, and with everything that he had on his plate, you know, the challenge was just to run that marathon—and stay sane.
Parshall: Something that people have noticed is when Connor speaks Russian in the show it seems like his face looks very different than the way it does when he’s just kind of himself, Connor Storrie. And I know this—in accents there’s this thing called oral posture, which is, like, how you hold your mouth and your tongue and everything. And speaking other languages I feel like my mouth changes shape entirely. And we were just kind of curious, like, do you coach people on changing the shape of their mouths in order to help understand how to make sounds? Is that part of anything? Or does it just come along with making the sounds correctly?
Yablunovsky: So what I do coach people is more about the insight into the culture of how people speak, the way a Russian speaker would pronounce, would enunciate, and the way their body language would go.
However, the facial expression is, actually—it’s more the placement of the speech, right? So for example, in English—English is very forward, right: the lips, the teeth, the breath. Well, Russian is more in the far back in the mouth, and there’s a heavier tongue base. So once you change all that it alters psychology. And that’s why, actually, you can hear different people who speak more than one language, when they speak different languages the sound of their voice changes because of how differently they intonate and possibly also their face.
So Connor’s facial expressions is something that he brought to the table; that’s his creation. But it’s inspired from the fact that all of those things that I’ve explained, you know, they alter your psychology, and it’s part of the character.
Parshall: One of the most impressive scenes, I think, for many people is the monologue that Connor does when he’s talking to Hudson [Williams]’s character, Shane, in Russia. Can you talk a bit about how that scene came together?
Yablunovsky: Yes, this monologue was something that we were stressed about because it was a few pages long; it was very emotionally charged. So it was not only to learn it, memorize it, but also hit the emotional mark. And here it was very important, you know, where he would place the stress, where he would pronounce it the right way. This is what makes all the difference.
And it started with—I make sure that when I teach actors Russian or prepare them for a Russian text, that they actually know what they’re saying. So they’re not memorizing Russian lines without understanding what they’re saying—to the word, right? It’s not like, “This line, it says this.” I translate every word for them, even if it doesn’t make sense. So meaning if in Russian the placement, the order of the words, is different than in English, I would translate it as is so that they understand each word that they’re saying and understand where the stress has to come and how do they enunciate this whole sentence.
Parshall: Is there an example—I don’t know if I remember how it was in the monologue.
Pierre-Louis: Oh, when he says that “I love Svetlana, but not the way that I love you”?
Yablunovsky: Well, he was saying—I’m just giving a free translation word by word into English. Let’s say, of the line, “I love you so much, and I don’t know what to do about it”: “I so strong you love.” (“Я так сильно тебя люблю.”) So just to show you, you know, how the order is different.
Parshall: Well, I could see how they need to know that ’cause otherwise the stress might fall on the wrong spot. Like, you wouldn’t really know how to feel it.
Yablunovsky: Right, because you’ll notice that in the monologue Connor did it perfectly. It was very beautiful and very touching. I was touched on set as well. But he said, “Ya tak SIL’no tebya lyublyu,” you know? He put this stress on, like, on the “so much”: “I love you so much.” And he put this stress in Russian, and the “сильно” is, like, “strongly”—you know, “so much” is what it means—he knew perfectly what he was doing.
Pierre-Louis: Some of the reaction to Connor’s accent on the show is that many of us have attempted to learn foreign-to-us language and struggled with accent and pronunciation, and it often feels like we’re sort of left to own devices to sort of, like, figure it out on how to, like, speak like a local. Do you have any tips for language learners sort of generally who aren’t in a position to hire a dialect coach?
Yablunovsky: I think when you learn a language, if you’re doing it by yourself, you can try the same principles of dialect coaching: listen to the pronunciation, and understand the sounds, and try to understand what’s happening in the mouth when you’re trying to pronounce that sound. And at first it won’t work, right, but then you have to kind of move the needle to find that sweet spot where you can make the sound, right?
Parshall: I mean, I think one of the interesting things about language learning is what you said earlier of thinking of having learned any language as, like, stretching your elastic. I thought that was, like, a nice metaphor. It seems like we’re hard on ourselves because we wanna sound, quote, unquote, “correct,” but I think of all the people who I know and love in my life who speak a different accent of English than mine, and it’s only, like, more beautiful flavors of English, so.
Yablunovsky: Totally.
Parshall: It’s about communication.
Yablunovsky: Exactly. And it’s different for actors because actors seek to attain a perfect accent. But the problem is that sometimes trying to attain a perfect accent is actually counterintuitive; it makes the character not real.
And when there’s a struggle I actually tell the actors, “Drop the accent.” And they panic. [Laughs.] But then when they say it in their own voice they kind of start hearing, like, where is the accent logic behind that language, in my case, Russian, right? Like, where’s the logic? Where’s the stress? Where’s the restraint? And then they hear it. They understand it. They’re able to do it, like, a bit more calmly, you know?
The accent has to live on top of the character, right? You can’t come and just perform it. It has to be part of the feeling.
Parshall: This has been so interesting, Kate. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Yablunovsky: Thank you so much.
Pierre-Louis: That’s all for today. Tune in on Friday, when we explore how kissing came to be.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was co-hosted by Allison Parshall and edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Kendra Pierre-Louis. See you next time!