OPINION: Memo for ‘The White Lotus,’ there is no such thing as a Durham accent

People are all up in arms about the North Carolina accents from the latest season of “The White Lotus.” So where exactly did they come from?

A lot of readers told me to listen to the guy who plays Timothy Ratliff in the new season of HBO’s “The White Lotus.”

That’s British actor Jason Isaacs, who’s probably best known for his role as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies. In this new TV show, he’s playing a rich dude from Durham who brings his family to a resort in Thailand. The joke is that Ratliff went to Duke and his wife Victoria (played by Parker Posey) went to UNC. Oh no! Hijinks ensue. Drug-fueled hijinks.

Outside of the show, though, the storyline seems to be about the Ratliff family accents, which at first seemed to be giving Foghorn Leghorn vibes. But what really got people going was a TikTok, in which Isaacs says no, he’s not doing a Southern accent, he’s doing a specific Durham, North Carolina accent.

It’s got two vowels in it, he says, that sound like upper class English. That’s the difference.

@streamonmax

It’s all in the twang. #TheWhiteLotus #HBO #JasonIsaacs #TimothyRatliff

♬ original sound – Max

Here’s the part where I say this is a work of fiction, and one that’s based on over-the-top version of rich people. Put everything into perspective! There’s a lot going on right now! This is not a big deal!

Except, of course, to people who know Durham, who either absolutely love it or absolutely hate it. I’m not going to go out and collect the most unhinged posts and TikToks out there. I’ll let you judge for yourself whether it’s a good accent or not. But I am going to give you at least one datapoint: According to Google Trends, nobody in the United States was really Googling “Durham accent” before that video came out.

All of this means that during the press tour for “The White Lotus,” poor Jason Isaacs is constantly getting asked about where he got that accent from. On a morning show in the U.K., he reiterated the two vowels thing (without saying which vowels they were), but also clarified a few things. The biggest thing was that he wasn’t doing a Durham accent per se. Instead, he was talking like a specific guy from Durham. “I don’t want to say his name. He might sue me!” Isaacs said. “But I had him in my headphones all the time. He was a local politician from Durham.”

That sent me into overdrive. What Durham politician sounds like that? I was about to fire off a bunch of phone calls and messages until I found this interview from Good Morning America, in which Isaacs admits that he’s talking like Thomas Ravenel.

You may be asking yourself: What part of Durham is Thomas Ravenel from? Trick question! He’s from Charleston, South Carolina. He was South Carolina’s state treasurer for a while. The big bridge down there is named after his dad. And yeah, he was on a reality show called “Southern Charm.” Once you hear him talk, you sort of get it.

“White Lotus” showrunner Mike White had the actors in the Ratliff family watch “Southern Charm” as research for their roles. For what it’s worth, Parker Posey has said her over the top accent comes from a lot of different places, and it’s meant to be funny! Chill out people!

So that explains it. except for that two vowels thing. The fine folks at Durham’s Indy Week called up Walt Wolfram at NC State, a professor who’s been studying North Carolina accents for decades. 

“We’ve done over 3,500 interviews everywhere in North Carolina over the last 30 years. And no one has ever said that there is anything unique about a couple of vowels in Durham,” the expert told Indy Week. He adds that a dialect coach likely told Isaacs to focus on a few key sounds, since it would be impossible to nail down an entire dialect in a short time.

“Nobody after puberty can just step in and learn a dialect like that,” says Wolfram.

He likes Posey’s accent a little bit better, and he also thinks that it’s accurate that the kids seem to have no Southern accent at all. That’s become more and more of A Thing in the Raleigh area as more and more outsiders move in. So no, the accents aren’t picture perfect. But once again, this proves that people really do care a lot about where they’re from, especially when those places are represented in TV shows and movies.

Jeremy Markovich writes about North Carolina curiosities at NC Rabbit Hole, subscribe at NCRabbitHole.com. This column is syndicated by Beacon Media and can be republished anywhere online or in print for free under Beacon Media’s guidelines.