11 Things You Didn't Know About Stephen Colbert
8. He Had A Southern Accent That He Worked Hard To Get Rid Of
Growing up on James Island in Charleston, South Carolina, Colbert actually had a southern accent for the early part of his life. He doesn't anymore only because he worked extremely hard to get rid of it. Colbert noticed from watching television and movies that people with thick southern accents were typically portrayed as being dumb, so while he was still a kid, he taught himself to lose that way of speaking.
"At a very young age, I decided I was not going to have a southern accent," Colbert told 60 Minutes. "I didn't want to seem stupid. I wanted to seem smart." How did he do it? Well, funnily enough considering his later career path, Colbert actually modeled his speech off of American news anchors, tuning in to them to figure out a more "proper" way of speaking.
"You can't tell where newsmen are from," he noted. Considering the character Stephen Colbert's way of speaking is pretty typical of a newsman, that skill would come in handy for Colbert in a number of ways.