Did Andrew Borden have a stutter? Charlie Hunnam breaks down accent and voice in Netflix show

In Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix, her father Andrew is depicted as having a recognisable accent, and stutter, when he talks. However, this wasn’t exactly accurate to real life. 

The show tells the story of Lizzie Borden, a young heiress chafing against her family’s expectations. In August 1892, she was accused of killing her step mother, Abby Borden and her father, Andrew Borden. She was later being acquitted, and nobody was found guilty of the murders. 

In the show, Andrew Borden is shown with an accent-stutter combo, but this was a voice that Charlie Hunnam, the actor who played him, has admitted to making up entirely. 

via Netflix

Charlie Hunnam has admitted he made up the accent and voice for Andrew Borden 

In a chat with CBR, Charlie Hunnam said the voice he had for Andrew Borden just sort of came to him, and the stutter isn’t factually correct. It just felt right when he was reading his lines. 

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“I tend to just wanna read the script over and over and over, and you know the first thing that occurred to me, the first thing that I started to hear with Andrew was that there was a stutter,” the actor said. “That’s not historically accurate. There’s nothing to indicate that he actually had a stutter.

“There’s one moment in the script that [the writer] wrote in that he sort of has a stutter, but it’s in a moment of sort of emotional duress. I just, as I would read the script so much. I have an aptitude, I have a horrible memory, but somehow an aptitude to be able to remember dialogue. So I’ll very quickly start knowing the dialogue.”

He explained he would often find himself “running back” the script and “exploring it” further, and said “that stutter in that voice just started to present itself to me.” 

So, it’s not true to real life, just something Charlie Hunnam felt he’d add in! Fair enough.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.