Graham Norton waded in to stop Austin Butler doing his impression of Elvis Presley again during an appearance on his show last night.
Here’s the video so you can see it for yourself:
To be fair, calling what Butler does an Elvis impression does it a bit of a disservice.
In truth, he was widely acclaimed for his performance as the King of Rock and Roll, and has even been nominated for an Academy Award for it too.
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Not only that, but there has also been much speculation about whether he’d ever be able to get rid of the twang in his voice, given the extensive vocal coaching he had in order to master it.
Naturally, the subject came up during his appearance on the famous couch with Graham Norton last night on BBC One.
Graham said: “I remember when I talked to you for Cannes [Festival] the Elvis voice was still very present in your voice and people have talked about that, but I think there’s a lot less of that now.
“Will it eventually go? Have you tried to get rid of it, have you been to a speech therapist or anything?”
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Austin responded: “People pull clips from when I was 17,
“My publicist told me the other day – I try to stay off social media so my publicist told me – people are talking about your voice and it really made me self-conscious for a second, because I though – am I being phoney?
“Is this not my voice?
“Then I thought, I’d have to think consciously to not talk how I am right now, but my voice sounds different when I talk to my dog, or when I talk to my dog, or when I’m here right now.
“We all have different bits of ourselves that we are releasing.”
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Expanding on what has actually happened to his voice, he said: “When I was really questioning it, I thought - OK, I’m older now, maybe sometimes I have a Southern twang, but I don’t think this is Southern.
“If I tried to sound like Elvis, I’d sound very different right now.”
Graham quickly quipped: “Don’t do it!”
Laughing it off, Butler responded: “You have to pay extra for that!”
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On a serious note though, it does seem as if some damage was done during the process of making Elvis, as he went on to explain: “The other thing is, I think from all the singing, I probably have destroyed my voice a bit.
“My vocal cords are raspier now, yeah.
“I just trained a lot, I trained a lot and then it turned out that Ryan [another singer, we’ll have to assume] ended up doing all the singing for that early stuff.”
Anyway, whatever he did, it definitely worked.
The film was a big hit, and Butler has been recognised for his performance, which presumably has to matter more than a bit of self-consciousness about whether or not he sounds a bit like Elvis still.
Topics: TV and Film, Austin Butler, Graham Norton, The Graham Norton Show, BBC, Celebrity, Elvis
Tom Wood