ABOUT THIS EPISODE
EPISODE 04 | SEASON 01
Fabien Enjalric is a dialect and language coach whose work has taken him behind the scenes of some of the biggest productions in film and television, including Dune, The Crown, Slow Horses, Wonder Woman, The King, Justice League and The Day of the Jackal.
His work exists in a part of filmmaking most audiences never see. Through accent, language, rhythm and sound, Fabien helps actors find the voice of a character and make it believable.
In this episode of Makers Workshop, we sit down with Fabien at Olympic Studios in London to explore the extraordinary craft behind making characters sound real on film.
Fabien traces his journey from an early obsession with languages and imitation to discovering, almost by accident, that dialect coaching was a profession. His first opportunity saw him working with Helen Mirren, beginning a career that has since taken him onto major film and television sets.
We explore what happens when an actor needs to speak with an unfamiliar accent or in another language. Fabien explains how he studies everything from mouth posture and individual sounds to rhythm, stress and intonation, before breaking dialogue into something an actor can absorb without losing their performance.
The conversation also takes us inside Dune and the challenge of working with Fremen. Although constructed for a fictional world, the language has its own grammar, vocabulary and phonetic system. Fabien explains what it takes to learn a language nobody grows up speaking, then help actors make it feel completely natural on screen.
But technical accuracy is only part of the job. Fabien explains why a perfectly pronounced word can sometimes be less important than an extraordinary performance, and how experience teaches you when to intervene and when to leave something alone.
We also explore AI and synthetic voices, the future of language in film, and why human judgement, connection and authenticity remain so important to the creative process.
Makers Workshop is a podcast about the people behind remarkable work. Hosted by Erik Stjernström and Julia Andersson of Makers Morrow, each episode is a conversation with someone who has spent their life creating, building or shaping something worth paying attention to.
IN THIS EPISODE:
• Making characters sound believable
• Fabien’s journey into dialect coaching
• Working with Helen Mirren
• The hidden craft behind film accents
• How actors learn unfamiliar languages
• Building trust with actors
• The four Ps of accent coaching
• Working under pressure on set
• Learning and coaching Fremen for Dune
• Making fictional languages feel real
• Knowing when not to correct a performance
• AI, synthetic voices and human authenticity
• Why judgement matters in creative work
• The invisible specialists behind major films
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Preview
02:00 Welcome to Makers Workshop
03:00 The invisible craft of dialect coaching
05:00 An obsession with languages and sound
08:00 Discovering dialect coaching
11:00 Working with Helen Mirren
14:00 Building a career behind the scenes
18:00 Building trust with actors
23:00 Making an accent part of a character
27:00 The four Ps of accent coaching
31:00 Preparing actors under pressure
35:00 AI, synthetic voices and authenticity
41:00 The tools behind dialect coaching
47:00 How the mouth creates language
52:00 Teaching actors unfamiliar languages
56:00 Learning Fremen for Dune
61:00 Making fictional languages feel real
66:00 Language in post-production
69:00 Knowing when not to correct an actor
74:00 Can creative judgement be taught?
78:00 Why learning never stops
83:00 The invisible craftspeople behind film
87:00 Advice for aspiring dialect coaches
New episodes every Tuesday.
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