Natalie Portman’s Wild ‘Lady in the Lake’ Accent Is Making Everyone Think of ‘Jackie’

If you are wondering if 2016 is somehow repeating itself, then look—and listen—no further than Natalie Portman’s turn as Maddie Schwartz in the new Apple TV+ period crime drama Lady in the Lake.

Early in the first episode, wearing a blood-stained skirt suit and a pillbox hat, her perfectly coiffed flipped bob framing her face, Portman’s Maddie delivers 1960s (and 2016) déjà vu. The moment Portman opens her mouth, it is impossible not to hear echoes of her infamous Jackie inflections that dominated much of an award cycle that ended with Emma Stone winning Best Actress for La La Land—yep, it was that Oscars.

Accent discourse can stretch for years, bubbling to the surface when you least expect it, which is why I couldn’t help but prick up my ears upon hearing Portman’s wispy mid-Atlantic tones in her Lady in the Lake Baltimore lilt (hello, “wooder” instead of “water”). Here, she plays an affluent Jewish housewife who aspires to break free from suburbia. She code-switches a bit between Yiddish words like “macher” when buying kosher lamb at the butcher, and a curt, abrupt tone during an emergency trip to a department store after blood leaks from this meat onto her chic suit. “I would never have guessed. You don’t look Jewish at all,” says one of the bigoted shopgirls when Maddie mentions the majority-Jewish neighborhood she is from.

Maddie’s horrified reaction to the age of the lamb in question (“just a baby”) and her haunted expression are equally familiar. Has the ghost of Jackie O come to say hello? Or are my British ears filling in the unique Bouvier intonation gap thanks to this First Lady-leaning attire, switching out Chanel pink for marigold yellow? Am I experiencing an auditory hallucination caused by years of people doing their best Natalie-as-Jackie impersonations? Or all of the above?

Perhaps Lady in the Lake is delivering a road-less-traveled version of the woman Jackie could have been if she hadn’t found her Camelot. After all, in the first episode, Maddie ditches her husband and eventually chases her journalism dreams, a career path Jackie briefly pursued before she married Kennedy.

You might say that I have been Jackie-pilled due to how long Portman's performance in Pablo Larraín’s biopic has lingered in my brain, occupying the same space as the midcentury movie dialogue that has become my own personal ASMR—the way Grace Kelly says the word “handbag” in Rear Window and Dial M for Murder is instantly soothing. A relic of American diction decades past the heights of its popularity, this dialect clips and elongates words seemingly at a whim, but there is a method to this elocution madness.

Given how keenly some scrutinized Portman’s Jackie vocals, calling in the accuracy experts (insert the “they didn't understand it” gif from Lady Bird for those who didn’t laud it), it might seem surprising that the Oscar winner would walk this path again. From the May December lisp mimicry to her Vox Lux Staten Island dialect, there is no sign that Portman would ever let naysayers impact her choices.

Commitment to the role is a Portman signature, and serving spiraling-yet-defiant grand dame excellence is unleashed once more. Portman’s performance in Jackie is as beguiling and brilliant now as it was eight years ago, so it is no shock that her work as Maddie is equally magnetic. Both characters have strong senses of self-belief, propriety, and preservation, and they get under your skin with every word and extra syllable uttered or dropped.

Lady in the Lake lets Portman exercise those Locust Valley Lockjaw-leaning muscles (not a wrestling move or health issue) she previously flexed in Jackie. Another Baltimore dialect performance standout is Mikey Madison hitting pronounced nasal ‘O’ sounds as the younger and less refined Judith, the daughter of a jewelry store owner.

The breathy Jackie-leaning affectations are most apparent when Portman is speaking softly during seduction or when she’s trying to seem meeker than she actually is. When she spits out the word “housewife” during an argument, it’s such a character-specific moment that it becomes clear that Portman isn’t just doing a rinse and repeat of the First Lady. She’s thought this performance through.

Whether you can hear Jackie in Lady in the Lake, when it comes to these specific Portman accents—accuracy or not—this is my Camelot.