An interview with a Dialect Coach and Equinox member, Jamison Bryant.
It’s Friday afternoon, and the Equinox studio is already almost full of members squeezing in a Pilates class before the weekend. Jamison Bryant drops down on a mat next to mine and sighs. “Long day, already. I did calls for an Irish accent, an Atlanta accent, and a Lithuanian accent, and it’s barely noon.” She’s ready for a sweat and solid stretch. “And then maybe a glass of wine at lunch.” We laugh.
We’ve been coming to the same classes for years, and it’s easy to clock Bryant as soon as she walks in — a head of thick black hair with one perfect silver streak. She’s gracious and calm with a face that says, “I’m listening to everything you’re saying.” Other members naturally gravitate toward her, making small talk before class.
But then, late last year, Bryant disappeared. I missed her presence in my classes, especially the moments of accidental eye contact during tricky poses, where we’d both immediately laugh. When she finally turned up again, it had been six months since she’d stepped foot in Equinox, and she was ready to get back into a routine.
It turns out she’d spent most of that time on a frozen lake outside of Reykjavik, Iceland. With Jodie Foster. This is the life of a professional dialect coach.
Upon her return, Bryant and I sat down for a conversation about her career and how fitness factors into her livelihood.
Tell me a little bit about what a dialect coach is.
“Dialect coaching is primarily working with actors. I work with business professionals occasionally, but mostly with actors or audiobook narrators or voiceover actors. When they have their natural accent that needs to be changed to fit another accent — so if they're from California but need to sound like they're from Texas, and they have to have a Southern drawl — I coach them on that. Sometimes, it’s not even an accent. If it’s a biopic of someone well-known, I’m teaching them how to speak like that unique person. In our sessions, we’re talking about how people speak, how we mirror that, and how we do it appropriately.”
Is there a particular career path? Or did you sort of fall into it?
“I’ve always loved speech. As a kid, I loved memorizing poems and reciting them, and I liked acting as a kid, but even from a young age, I knew I’d prefer being on the other side of that camera. But actually my career started with working with kids with autism, so I wound up studying Speech and Language Pathology. Around that time, I learned that dialect coaching was a profession — clearly not something every kid says when you ask them what they want to be when they grow up. It kept coming back to me, though, and I started reaching out to people [in the industry]. Eventually, I was introduced to my mentor, and she gave me my first big break — working with someone with a character who had a stutter. I remember thinking it was all inverted. I went to school to teach people how not to stutter. Long story short, production was happy with our work, and I didn’t get fired. And here I am.”
What does an average day look like for you?
“Sometimes it's waking up at 5:30 am to be on a 6:30 am call because my client might be in London, and I'm in LA. I've always had people worldwide, so I'm always on different time zones and trying to make it work for everybody. Sometimes I’m in meetings all day; sometimes it’s very spread out. And then, when I'm on set, that's a different ballgame. It’s great but tough — you’re working very long hours in the middle of the night or starting early in the morning and then trying to squeeze in private clients on the weekends. Because of the strike right now, my day-to-day is more private clients — people working on things that are coming up and a lot of warm-ups. Actually, that’s another odd but cool part of the job. I work with musicians, sometimes rappers, that are touring and need help warming up their voices so they don’t burn themselves out.”
What are some of the projects you’ve worked on recently?
“I've been booked on shows with Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and HBO, and then I've also worked on some films, including Bullet Train and an A24 project. Most recently, I was in Iceland for six months, including the entire winter, filming the next season of True Detective. It’s supposed to take place in northern Alaska near the Arctic Circle. So we had actors from Iceland, Greenland, England, and Ireland, and they had to sound not only American but Alaskan, which is essentially a Northwest accent. It’s fascinating. At this point, Anchorage is more diverse than Los Angeles, so we just wanted to give everyone a very neutral sound.”
It would be challenging to maintain routines at Equinox with constantly changing work and all the travel. What’s your secret?
“Well, when I was in Iceland, there was no Equinox in Iceland yet. (I’m sure they would love it, by the way.) But the [Equinox+] app came in handy for classes — I’d do Pilates from my apartment in Reykjavik, but sometimes I’d be in my trailer between shoots and sneak a class in. We were there in winter, so it was so cold, and you're wearing so many things, and you get into your warm trailer and take your jacket off, and you realize how stiff you are. You’re also standing on your feet for hours or crouching in a corner with headphones on, listening to the accent somewhere where you won’t get in the shot. So I would get back to my trailer and do an Equinox video on stretching just to get my blood flowing and warm myself up. Even those little moments matter. I'm watching my parents get older, and seeing how active they are compared to other people their age, and I'm like, ‘Wow, you have to keep moving.’ So that always is in my mind.”
You made a joke before this interview about how you think you can write off your Equinox membership because of its benefits to your career. Tell me more.
“I need impeccable lung capacity and a solid core to do this work. I take Yoga and Pilates classes for the core and breathwork, and then I head for the steam room multiple times a week to help open up my system. You need the strong core in part because you need to be able to stand on set for long hours, but actually, I need it for my dialect work.
“When most people think about speech, we think it’s just noise that comes from our mouths. But speech is all the way down to your diaphragm and in your belly. And to support that system, you have to make sure your abdominals are strong and that you have great breath support.
“Have you ever heard a TED Talk with someone who isn’t a professional public speaker? They get nervous and forget to breathe, and suddenly, they’re out of breath. Another example: With people who are performing, they have to do a lot of yelling or fighting or whatever. And they’re doing it over and over again. You’ll see actors running or doing push-ups in the middle of recording to get the sound right. Or they do warm-ups with me, because if you don’t warm up your voice and you’re screaming repeatedly, you’re going to burn out. You’re going to overtrain your voice and injure it.”
So you’re saying speech is basically cardio.
“You’re joking, but actually, yes. If you flex your arm or touch your thigh or calf, it’s very easy to understand that that’s muscle, right? But we forget that there are muscles in our throats, our mouths, our lips. There are eight muscles in the tongue — 43 muscles in the face. To do this work, to shift between accents, it’s all about retraining your mouth. You have to keep your muscles flexible, sort of like being able to touch your toes. And depending on the accent, you’re also using muscles you might not typically work. Changing your tongue is a lot like working your abdominal muscles. I’m from Southern California, so my mouth is always very wide. I feel like I’m at risk of catching a fly in my mouth. But when I’m doing a British accent, it’s all about narrowing the mouth — I always think of it like railroad tracks.”
Now I need to know how you would describe a New York accent.
“New York is more narrow. You know, with dialects, the trick is thinking about your environment because our speech evolves based on how we live. If you’re in New York City or the outer boroughs, you don’t have a lot of personal space. There’s a lot of volume, so you’re competing with a lot of extra noise. In Los Angeles, you’ve got room. You’ve got yards. You’re spreading out and talking wide — sort of like how the city sprawls.”
Last question: What does your Equinox routine look like?
“I will say the hours at Equinox are incredible. I would love to be that person doing the 7:15 a.m. Pilates class, but I’m either on an international call then or need that precious REM sleep after a long day or night on set. But usually, I find myself between calls from 11 to 3, and so I head straight there. I do a Pilates class on Friday and Saturday, and sometimes a Barre class, which again is great for lung capacity and flexibility. But sometimes, I just go with my iPad and hop on the treadmill or elliptical. Equinox is my coworking space. I’ll read scripts, listen to recordings, or research a particular accent while on the treadmill. And then the steam room. Always the steam room.”