Keala Settle Defends Using British Accent After Moving to U.K. from U.S.

Keala Settle has three words for critics of her accent: This is me.

The Greatest Showman star, 48, was asked about exhibiting a British accent following a move to London, during an interview with YouTuber and theater critic Mickey-Jo posted Wednesday, Oct. 16.

Recalling Settle speaking ahead of her January 2022 & Juliet performance during the National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals in Manchester, England, Mickey-Jo told her, “The nation collectively went into shock when you came out with this British accent that people didn’t know about!”

Settle was born and raised in Hawaii to a mother from New Zealand and a father from Oldham, England. She told The Guardian in July 2022 that after hearing her parents’ accents made fun of as a child, she adjusted her voice to sound American.

And today, Settle’s voice “is exactly what it is,” she told Mickey-Jo during their interview. “It’s my life. It’s who I am. I’m not gonna try and sit here and go, ‘I get to be this, I get to be that.’ I’m going to be who I am. What anyone else thinks of me is their problem, and it will always be their problem. All I can do is look after myself at every single level.”

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The actress and singer, who starred as Angelique/Nurse in & Juliet in Manchester and Sydney, went on to say that she “will never be the same as the person in 2019. I won’t be the same person as yesterday. And I hope to Christ you’re not the same person.”

“I hope that we all give ourselves the grace and the opportunity to evolve into whatever we’re becoming every day. Because that never stops until we’re six feet under or burnt to ashes and scattered across the North Sea. That never changes — well, I hope it doesn’t,” she continued.

For Settle, “It all depends on us individually to just sort of look after ourselves. And then when we know we can do that, we can look after each other properly.”

And in her own case, “I’m a person of the globe,” she said. “My home is in me — it will always be in me. It’s been tattered and torn and I’ve had to rebuild it numerous times, but it’s always been there. So wherever I go is where I belong, because I belong [inside myself].”

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Settle previously opened up about performing her inspiring, Oscar-nominated Greatest Showman anthem “This Is Me” at the 2018 Academy Awards — just a week after she lost half of her body’s motor functions due to a mini-stroke that would lead doctors to diagnose her with a rare cerebrovascular disorder known as Moyamoya disease.

Six months after undergoing a 10-hour double-bypass brain surgery to correct the problem, Settle spoke out about her health crisis for the first time in an interview with PEOPLE, admitting it changed her for the better.

“It’s shifted me in ways I’m still understanding,” she marveled at the time. “The way that I look at the world is so completely different. I’m more at peace than I’ve ever been; I can find the joy in things I never could. This truly gave me another lease on life.”

“The universe had its chance to take me and I’m still here,” Settle added. “I’m just so grateful to be alive and I’m not giving that up.”

Settle can next be seen on the big screen as Miss Coddle in Wicked, the first part of which hits theaters Nov. 22.