A Quote by Eric Nam

I was criticized a lot when I was singing in Korean. The producers and people from my agency would point out my accent and tones, and would tell me I sound too American to fit the local market.
I would be criticized, like, 'You don't talk Korean enough. You sound very American. You sound very white in your music.' And I'm like, 'Whoa.'
I love Korean food, and it's kind of like home to me. The area that I grew up in outside Chicago, Glenview, is heavily Korean. A lot of my friends growing up were Korean and when I would eat dinner at their houses, their parents wouldn't tell me the names of the dishes because I would butcher the language.
Acting for me was hard enough without having to think of the accent. And also, when I was auditioning for stuff I would walk into the room with an Australian accent, and I would do the audition in an American accent, and they would invariably say, 'Yeah, it's that good, but I can still hear the oddity coming through.'
I never would have guessed that I would get a job for the way I sound. I would get notes about how I should lose my accent, and part of me thinks, 'How dare you! This is who I am! Millions of people want to sound like me!' But it's sensitive, and I have tried to change it, with little to no success.
I have spent too long training myself to speak with an American accent, it's ingrained. I spend 16 hours a day on set speaking with an American accent. Now, when I try to speak with an Aussie accent, I just sound like a caricature of myself.
I didn't want to be on screen not nailing an American accent. It's an insult to an American! There are plenty of great American actors who can already do an American accent, so me, coming in and stealing their roles, the one thing I have to perfect is the accent. So for years I practiced. And we're lucky because the whole world is raised on a library of American movies. I would pretend to be Jim Carrey, and, I say Robin Williams now because he's in my mind, but those actors really inspired us to be crazy and be theatrical.
The Middle East would always be an important trading partner in just a market sense, like America is a big market for us, Asia is a big market, Europe is a big market. You are going to have hundreds of millions of consumers there, from just a standard market point of view, from a very narrow American point of view.
I used to play a lot of foreign women in my youth because I was prettier then. I would go for interviews, and directors would look at these sultry, exotic looks, hear this clipped accent and think the two don't go together. So they would give me a foreign accent.
I think the hardest accent for me to do is what I end up trying a lot of times, and it's like some sort of a general American sound. So not Southern and not east-coast or west-coast, but just a general American sound that no one really speaks, actually.
My accent fades away I guess when I sing. It's real weird. I guess singing is pretty much a universal language like you sing however everyone else sings and that's with an American accent. I sound very different when I talk.
The American accent is a little bit tricky. We grew up with American TV shows, so we've had a lot of exposure to it and that helps, but there's little nuances and little details. Sometimes there'll be just a phrase or couple words that are really difficult to get your mouth around. At the end of every season we go over and revoice anything that has sound issues, including my kiwi accent coming out.
Who, of men, can tell That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, If human souls did never kiss and greet?
I've never bought a Dylan record. A singing poet? It just bores me to tears. I've got to tell you, if I had 10 Dylans in the final of 'American Idol,' we would not be getting 30 million viewers a week. I don't believe the Bob Dylans of this world would make 'American Idol 'a better show.
Who would imagine, at Coachella, thousands of people singing in Korean?
Those who know me well will tell you that I love a market, and when I say market, I mean food market. No matter where in the world, they allow me to soak up the culture, to hear the rhythmic chattering of the local people and traders, and take in the all-important smells, pungent and intoxicating.
I watched a lot of documentaries about North Korean defectors. I also practiced speaking in a North Korean accent with a teacher, and studied a lot.
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