Austin Butler Used a Dialect Coach to Lose His Elvis Voice

The saga of Austin Butler’s weird fake Elvis voice continues, as the actor has confirmed that he used a “dialect coach” to help rid himself of the King’s iconic accent after he continued using it well past the premiere of Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic, Elvis.

Sitting down last night for an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Butler confessed that after the three-year process of filming Elvis concluded, he was a bit daunted by what to do next. “I was just trying to remember who I was,” he said. “I was trying to remember what I liked to do. All I thought about was Elvis for three years.”

As Butler explained, his Elvis co-star, Tom Hanks, ultimately provided him with a path forward by offering him a role in the Apple TV+ series, Masters of the Air (the subject of Consequence’s latest cover story). Deciding to direct his “dialect-and-all” method acting momentum into a new role — in part at the suggestion of Hanks, who joked that Butler would “lose [his] mind” after focusing on Elvis for so long — Butler took only a single week off after finishing Elvis before he began preparing to play World War II veteran Major Gale “Buck” Cleven.

“I had that week off and then I flew to London — and at that time it was COVID, so I’m quarantined for 10 days — so, I thought: ‘Alright, just pour all this energy into learning about World War II now,’” Butler said.

But, as anyone who has heard Butler speak in public over the past few years can attest, there was still one, little problem: his lingering “Elvis voice.” For that, Butler decided to use the same thing he used to get his impersonation down-pat in the first place: a dialect coach. “I had a dialect coach just to help me not sound like Elvis,” he told Colbert. “That was the whole thing.”

Bafflingly, Colbert didn’t really ask any follow-up questions about Butler’s de-Elvisization, nor the professionals who helped him through it, so we’re a bit short on the details of how things went down. Listening to Butler speak in the interview, it does seem that he’s improved a bit and dropped some of the Southern drawl, but overall he still sounds one well-placed compliment away from a “Thank you, thank you very much.”

Incurably-Elvis’d or not, though, Butler certainly seems to have connected with his new role in Masters of the Air. Speaking to Colbert, he made clear his fascination and reverence for the sacrifice World War II airmen made, as did his co-star Nate Mann when he spoke to Consequence for our cover story on the series. Named by Consequence as one of the 25 most anticipated TV shows of 2024, Masters of the Air premieres Friday, January 26th on Apple TV+.

Watch the full clip of Butler’s chat with Colbert below, and brush-up on the saga of his Elvis voice with our timeline overview.