Bollywood films are known to represent regional stories from across India, apart from Hindi. These films require the characters to speak a different dialect, be it Haryanvi, Bengali, or Tamil. The actors’ accent plays a crucial role in dialogue delivery in certain roles. For instance, recently when the trailer of Abhishek Bachchan’s Dasvi was released, netizens started talking about his Haryanvi accent.
We’ll get a clear picture of his accent in the movie once it releases, but Bollywood actors have had a bad reputation of not getting the regional accent right. Here are a few we all could not help noticing.
1. Hrithik Roshan in Super 30
The film is based on the life of a mathematician from Bihar, Anand Kumar, who provides coaching to a group of economically backward children for competitive IIT entrance examinations. Hrithik played the lead role of Anand Kumar and was criticised for his mannerisms, make-up, and awful Bihari accent.
2. Shahid Kapoor in Batti Gul Meter Chalu
The film is about vandalizing of electricity and the inflated bills that put consumers in a shock. Shahid Kapoor plays the role of a lawyer who fights against a private electricity company responsible for the inflated bills and one of his friends’ suicide. The film is set in a small Uttarakhand town and Shahid’s Garhwali accent is shockingly horrible. The dialect sounds totally off.
3. Vidhatri Bandi in Jalsa
Vidhatri plays the role of a trainee Malayali journalist, Rohini George. Her dialogue delivery in Malayali accent sounded out of place and forced.
4. Deepika Padukone in Chennai Express
You ask anybody who belongs to south India and they’d say that Deepika Padukone’s Tamil accent in the film was not even close to accurate. In several interviews, Deepika had revealed that she learned Tamil for the film but clearly she didn’t get it right.
5. Aishwarya Rai in Umrao Jaan
Aishwarya Rai played the role of Umrao Jaan in the film. For a film that was supposed to have some sophisticated language, Aishwarya’s Urdu was too flat.
6. Shah Rukh Khan in RaOne
SRK plays the lead role of Shekhar, a south Indian living in the UK. His lame Tamil accent, jokes, and Aiyyo with every damn sentence felt like an insult to Tamil-speaking people.
7. Anushka Sharma in Sultan
Anushka plays the role of Aarfa Ali Khan, Sultan’s wife in the film. Although she spent a lot of time with female wrestlers to learn their mannerisms and the way they speak, she did not get the Haryanvi accent right.
8. Sara Ali Khan in Atrangi Re
Sara plays the role of Rinku Sooryavanshi in the film. Her character is from a small town in Bihar and once again Bollywood didn’t get the Bihari accent right.
When the actors get their dialect and accent right, the movie-watching experience becomes more wholesome. There has been a criticism of Anushka Sharma’s Bengali accent in her upcoming film Chakda ‘Xpress too. But only the movie will tell if she nails it or not.