FHM.com.ph

You're a British actor, playing this American icon... what did you do with your accent? Where does it go?
There are lots of recordings of FDR speaking. And another challenge was that, obviously, you hear him in statesman-like mode, usually recordings of him making public speeches, and like politicians at the time, there was a kind of oratorical, presented quality to it. They often spoke like great men. They spoke great phrases, there were great purple passages, and you have to make a guess of how he spoke in private.
But he was so very, very aware of his voice, he was very, very aware of the use of it. And very aware of the effect of it. He was a very good speaker... eventually, but Eleanor said that, at the beginning, he wasn't. It really wasn't until Warm Springs, and going down South, going to Georgia, and finally having the independence of a motor car that he could drive without feet controls, it was all done with hands, that he would get out on his own, and he would go to meet people and talk to people, and find out a different view of America and Americans than perhaps he'd been used to.

It took him a long time to get that, but... like many people of his class at that time, his accent was much affected by trips to England, he'd been going to Europe since he was six... often once a year. They spoke foreign languages, he spoke a little French. Eleanor said he spoke very bad Italian, but he believed he was very good at both languages. But there was, if not an affectation, there was definitely an influence from the English side of the culture that they'd been made very aware of.