At long last, the truth has spoken—and it’s going back to its normal speaking voice. While appearing on The Graham Norton Show, Oscar nominee Austin Butler admitted that the Memphis drawl he put on to play Elvis Presley, which, curiously, remains to this day, is not in fact his real voice.
Yeah, we knew.
“I am getting rid of the accent, but I have probably damaged my vocal cords with all that singing,” Butler told host Graham Norton, while still maintaining that Southern twang. “One song took 40 takes!”
Butler’s speaking voice has been the subject of a ton of (harmless) scrutiny over the course of awards season. Born in Anaheim, California (which is decidedly not located in the American Deep South), Butler burst on the scene as a child actor in projects like Zoey 101 and The Carrie Diaries before Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic was ever a twinkle in his eye. As such, he had amassed a fan base familiar with what his voice sounded like when he was not channeling the King. So, when filming on Elvis wrapped in March of 2021 and the movie hit theaters in June of 2022 and Butler still sounded eerily similar to his titular role on the ensuing press tour, eyebrows were raised, jokes were told, and memes were made. Butler’s Elvis vocal coach, Irene Bartlett, said that Butler’s “accent was genuine” and that it “might stay forever,” prompting Butler’s ex-girlfriend, Vanessa Hudgens, to comment that she was “crying” about Butler’s recent diagnosis on an Instagram post. And reader, so were we.
But to his credit, Butler has been good-natured about the gentle ribbing without ever dropping the bit. In December, he hosted Saturday Night Live and addressed the accentroversy directly. “There are people that have been saying that ever since I played Elvis, my voice changed. It got deeper, more Elvis-y,” Butler said during his opening monologue. “That’s not true. I’ve always sounded like this and I can prove it.” Butler then throws to a clip from an interview he did on the carpet of The Carrie Diaries, where his voice is sped up to Alvin and the Chipmunks level. See, he’s in on the joke!
More celebrities should be like Butler, who obviously studied at the Lady Gaga school of press tours before embarking on his Elvis press tour. His commitment to the bit—the bit being refusing to not talk like the second coming of the King of Rock and Roll—was impressive. Not for nothing, it was also well executed. Elvis is perhaps the most impersonated person on the planet, and for Butler to establish himself as the divine vessel for Elvis’s voice—and potentially suffer permanent vocal damage in the process—that takes talent and moxie.
Sadly, everything good—even Elvis accents—comes to an end. In an interview with USA Today, Dave Bautista, who stars with Butler in the highly anticipated Dune: Part Two claims that Butler does not sound like Elvis in the film directed by Dennis Villeneuve. “I don’t know who this guy was, but it’s not Austin Butler. It’s not Elvis,” Bautista says. Butler joins the film as Feyd-Rautha, the evil nephew of Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) and brother to Bautista’s Glossu Rabban. Bautista says that Butler is “just the sweetest guy you’ll ever meet,” but says that Butler’s performance as Feyd-Rautha is “terrifying.” “His voice is different, his look is different. Everything about his demeanor is terrifying.” In that case, we hope Butler goes back to his Elvis voice for the Dune: Part 2 press tour.
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