Fans couldn’t help but dig into Chelsea Lazkani’s dialect after she joined the cast of Selling Sunset season 5.
During the season 5 reunion, which started streaming on Netflix on Friday, May 6, the 29-year-old real estate agent addressed speculation about her voice.
“So clearly, everyone thinks I’m faking my accent,” Chelsea told host Tan France. “My parents are Nigerian, so I grew up in a household where my parents had an accent, right? I lived in London for the first 10 years of my life. Then, I moved to Switzerland. And then, I moved to New Jersey. Then, I moved to New York. And now, I live in Los Angeles.”
She added: “I’m working on it. But this is me, OK? This is what you’re getting. I’m not faking it. If I was, I’d be a really f—king good actress.”
After the reunion aired, a social media user made a TikTok with reunion footage and Chelsea’s 2017 wedding video, in which her accent doesn’t sound quite as strong as she exchanged vows with Jeff Lazkani.
@portiatuesday Proof Chelsea IS faking her accent.#sellingsunset #chelsealazkani #fakeaccent
Chelsea previously spoke about fans commenting on her voice last month.
“The word on the street is that my accent is fake. I know it’s all over the place but listen there’s an explanation, OK?” she said via Instagram at the time. “I’ve lived in four countries in my short 29 years of life. I’ve lived in London, I’ve lived in Switzerland, I’ve lived in New Jersey, I now live in Los Angeles so my accent is a mish-mosh of all the places I’ve lived but I’m a London girl at heart.”
Chelsea is hardly the first celebrity to be accused of changing their dialect over the years. Meghan Markle, Hilaria Baldwin, Madonna and Lindsay Lohan are among the most famous potential accent adaptors, while fellow reality star Dorit Kemsley has fired back at resurfaced clips from her past after joining The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with an English flare in her voice.
“I think the way I speak is probably a combination of many things. First and foremost, I am married to a Brit who’s got a very, very strong London accent, and I’m sure some of his inflections have sort of rolled over on me,” the Connecticut native told Bravo’s The Daily Dish in February 2017, referring to her U.K. born husband, P.K Kemsley. “My parents are not American. I was born and raised in America. I did spend a significant amount of time, nearly 10 years, back and forth going to Europe. I spent a lot of time working all over the world and in various places of the world where people didn’t speak English all that well.”
Dorit added at the time: “I had a tendency to over enunciate, so I think at times some of my English is part that and part inflection. And you know being around a lot of Europeans and a lot of Brits, you just become a product of your environment really. That’s who I am. That’s the way I speak. I don’t hear it. My husband doesn’t hear it but it’s definitely become a topic of conversation.”
