Being an international storyteller and the magic of languages | Interview with Fernando Mariano
I interviewed Fernando Mariano about learning accents for different characters and working as an actor in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
“Having other languages in your pocket, it’s just magical because it gives you so much. It’s so rich in culture. It’s so rich in work…It just gives you so much” — Fernando Mariano
Born in Brazil and raised in Portugal, Fernando grew up speaking Portuguese. He now works in English and Spanish as an actor, specializing in musical theater. Fernando also brings his creativity to advertising for brands and campaigns such as Act Up. In 2020, he created the Artist Business School to help creative people get organized and make money from their passion.
Here are my notes from our interview together, and you can listen to the full recording below.
On learning English…
Though Fernando had learned to speak English to a pretty high level at school in Portugal, it was still a big leap when he came to study in the UK. He had to use English all day, every day to study a text-based subject: acting.
He explained that experience with European Portuguese — which has a range of vowel sounds — made things a bit easier for him than it would be for someone learning English from Spanish. There are only five vowel sounds in Spanish, but twelve in English.
How did he stay dedicated when things got difficult? He said he gave himself no other option: “There is one way: I stop and I can go some other way and I forget what I want or, I can just…go get what I want. And the work is: go get what you want.”
On developing accents for different shows…
Accent work is a challenge for a lot of actors because it requires such a high level of precision. If you get any sound the slightest bit wrong, you lose your audience. It’s even more difficult when you’re learning an accent that’s not in your native language.
Fernando’s advice:
Break it into little pieces.
“What I’m going to think is that I just need to say this word, right. And then I just need to say this word, then…I just need to get this phrase. And then I just need to get into this monologue. And then before you know it, you’re saying the whole of Comma Gets a Cure!” (Comma Gets a Cure is a widely-used passage for identifying and practicing different accents)
Repeat a text to create muscle memory.
Accents and language are mechanical. You have to physically train your muscles to get them right. “It’s like going to the gym” explains Fernando. When he’s learning a new accent for a role, Fernando will repeat passages at least 27 times to build muscle memory. When we spoke, he’d been working on an accent for an audition in Madrid and had spent three weeks focusing on the same six pages of dialogue.
On regaining confidence after getting fired…
Fernando recounted a time when he’d been hired for a part in a show and then the producers decided to give him a second part — one with a heightened Received Pronunciation (RP) accent (like how the royal family speaks).
When he couldn’t do the accent to the standard they wanted, they ended his contract. He explained that for a while he felt like an imposter. But then he said he realized “my limitations are part of the magic of my work”. Our unique background and experience allow us to do some amazing things, but not everything, and that’s ok. You can work up to a point, but sometimes “if the work is not right for you, then it’s just not right for you.”
On constantly improving and being yourself…
When I asked what advice Fernando had for someone in a similar position to him at the start of his career he said “understand your weaknesses and strengthen them”. It’s important to understand what you’re good at so you can show that off, but then “don’t sit on the work that you know”. Focus on improving and maintaining the skills that you have and gaining new ones.
“You just need to work within the world that we have today…That we can be anywhere that we want. That we can explore the world as we want. And we can be nomads,” he explained. “It’s so important to be who you are and for you to really work on the things that you have that no one else has.”
Here’s the interview recording!
Intro & outro music by Florin. The link at the end has been updated — the new link for my teaching project is saracogg.in/speaklikeyou