For all of you watching Orange is the New Black - where is Joe Caputo's accent from? I am not a native speaker of English and I have a tin ear anyway, so it took me three seasons to notice that he drops his r's a bit.
Well, I haven't seen that TV series, so I had no idea who Joe Caputo was until I Googled his name. Then I found this clip on YouTube so I could actually listen to the character. Warning: explicit content (but it's the first video I found with Caputo speaking, and from what I read of the series, typical for the character) ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jz74XV3duM
I've spoken US English all my life, and known people from all parts of the country. To my ears, Caputo's character sounds like an East Coast accent, probably New York. When I first heard his voice, it reminded me of a guy who did some backhoe work for me on my property. And he was from Brooklyn.
Thanks for looking that up. I thought it could be "Noo Yawk tawk" (the series takes place in upstate NY, I think, or at least within driving distance from NY).
Listening to other YouTube clips, it appears that he doesn't consistantly speak in the same accent. When he's trying to cound tough, e uses it; otherwise he is unaccented.
I'd call it a "bad Hollywood" accent.
The tough-guy accent sounds a lot like "Phillitalian" to me. Philadelphia is at one end of "Joisey" and Brooklyn is at the other. It's not too far to drive between the two, and 17.9% of New Jersey is Italian.
I agree that his accent sometimes seems muddled. As for his roots, he claims the Bronx:
In an interview at The Times, Mr. Sandow, 48, spoke about his film and a character obsessed with gangster movies. Here are excerpts from that conversation.
Q. Tell me about your interest in making a movie set during this early ’90s moment in New York.
A. That was my time. I’m born and raised in the Bronx, and I’m from a similar neighborhood as Thomas. So that world was very vivid to me. I had one foot still in the Bronx and one foot in acting class. And I was on that bridge of, should I stay? And what will I be if I stay? So it just was ripe for me.
...
Actors often have to do accents and get training on them. I imagine after a few, it is hard to keep them fully distinct.