With the possible exception of awful Irish faux-brogues and phony Brooklyn I-talian talk, what way of speaking has been more consistently mangled by actors in the last 30 years than the Jamaican accent? Even seasoned professionals seem to have the impression that stringing “mon,” “irie” and “bloodclot” into a coherent sentence equates to passable patois. Just watch how much Robin Williams misses the mark in his occasionally on-point accent marathon. With a little help from our friends Ian Swain and Alanna Stuart from Toronto’s Bonjay, we present the most unintentionally—and intentionally—bad Ja-fakin’ accents and worst patois faux-pas.
10. Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black
Playing a linguistically gifted Grim Reaper, Pitt’s brief Jamaican accent is. . . pretty good! It’s the visuals of frosted tips-era Brad Pitt saying, “It’s not yuh time nuh” and “Rahhhtid” that we just cannot abide.
Tina Fey continues her good-at-everything run by connecting the dots between Jamaica’s accent and Ireland’s own lilt – a genuine affinity (Google it)— in 30 Rock‘s “Future Husband” episode. Bobsled! In the follow-up dream sequence, however, Jon Hamm, Jason Sudeikis and team make the classic bad-patois mistake of filling in their vocabulary gaps with slang cribbed from Moesha re-runs. No you di’in’t…
6. Hermes Conrad (Phil LaMarr) from Futurama
Matt Groening is a known Jamaica-phile: he covered reggae as a music journalist in his younger years and named The Simpsons‘ Dr. Hibbert after Toots. So we’d expect better than the indistinct accent that voice actor Phil LaMarr adopts for Futurama‘s Hermes. If it wasn’t for his dreads and references to Haile Selassie (and the musical sequence below), we might not even figure him for a yardie.
5. Dave Chappelle in Half Baked
There really is not much to say about this classic scene from Half Baked because the hilarity is a direct function of the fact that Chappelle is fooling nobody with his bad-ois (Q: “Where in Jamaica?” A: “Right near de beeeach.”) Dancehall fans will note that Dave clearly learned to speak Jamaican from listening to Bounty Killer and Shabba 45s, peppering his speech with gratuitous lawdamercy!s —a tactic he brought back on Chappelle’s Show for an amazing Miss Cleo-inspired fake psychic skit.
4. Damon Wayans on In Living Color
As we’ve documented, In Living Color made good comedic use of the ’90s dancehall craze but the ultimate in black-acting school patois was the “Hey Mon” skit series. A few of the cast members (Kim Cole basically) had a passable lilt to their island accent (even if she came down a little on the Bajan side). But, as the patriarch of ILC‘s multi-tasking Hedley family, New York-based (no excuse!) Damon Wayans sounds like a constipated leprechaun, frequently breaking into the nasal whine from his Anton Jackson homeless-man character. Which in no way detracts from the humor, proof being that this “Hey Mon Airlines” installment inspired endless variations on the “A-tarrity? You look like Isaac from the Love Boat…” line around our lunchroom table.
You couldn’t watch daytime or late-night TV in the late ’90s without the Psychic Friends Network’s Miss Cleo beseeching you with the infamous catchphrase, “Call Me Now!” It would soon be revealed that Cleo wasn’t really the Jamaican medium she purported herself to be but actually a Los Angeles-born actress named Youree Del Harris. Although it’s plain to see now that Miss Cleo was Ja-fakin’, she had a lot of people fooled, didn’t she?
1. Philip Michael Thomas in Miami Vice
As the ethnically ambiguous half of Miami Vice‘s buddy cop equation, the job requirements for Philip Michael Thomas’ Ricardo Tubbs included lots of affected international accents on undercover investigations. Thing was Thomas’ laughable patois would have gotten any real detective 187’ed faster than you can shout “Narc!” Tubbs was supposed to be from the Bronx, but Thomas couldn’t even get that right, pronouncing “New York” like a drunken Bostonian stumbling out of Fenway Park after an extra-inning loss to the Yankees: New Yahhhhk. But it is Tubbs’ woefully misguided and under-rehearsed Jamaican accent—first unveiled in the pilot episode’s infamous strip club scene below—that’s the stuff of legend.
Honorebel Mention: Lisa Bonet and “Eddie Lakehart” on The Cosby Show (“Full House” episode); Doug E. Doug, Omar and Malik Yoba in Cool Runnings; Dan Akyroyd in Trading Places; Taye Diggs in How Stella Got Her Groove Back
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