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Graham Bensinger channel icon Graham BensingerOriginal creator 7.6M views Save

Where Larry the Cable Guy found that accent

Larry the Cable Guy was born Daniel Lawrence Whitney in Nebraska. Ask him about that Southern drawl and he calls himself "a linguist chameleon." more

He tells interviewer Graham Bensinger the voice comes and goes easily. Spend two days with his cousins in Wisconsin, he says, and he's talking like a local: "Hey, let's go to La Crosse."

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Asked how easily he slips in and out of the accent, he says he picks up voices wherever he goes.

Some of it started at home. His dad was a backwoods preacher with a little Southern in his voice. The family were horse and cattle people from northeast Kansas, and they had "a little twinge" too.

The real accent took hold in Florida. He was a country kid who loved livestock, and out in Loxahatchee he was drawn to the horse people and the country folks.

Then came a Baptist college in Georgia, where he majored, of all things, in drama and speech. One roommate was from Dalton, Georgia, "super Southern." The other was from Beaumont, Texas. Between the two of them, he says, "it just kind of solidified." By the time he left school in his junior year to try comedy, the voice was ready.

Older adult male wearing a gray hoodie with red lettering, camo baseball cap backward, and wedding ring in casual indoor setting. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Larry the Cable Guy was born Daniel Lawrence Whitney in Nebraska.

To explain the switch, he reaches for George Lopez. "You ever hang out with George Lopez?" he asks. The interviewer has not. Larry says Lopez talks to you one way, then turns it all the way up the minute one of his buddies walks by. Most people, it's safe to say, have never hung out with George Lopez either.

"I can turn it on and turn it off anytime I want," he says. "It's not a big deal to me." His buddy Brad, he adds, talks like that 24 hours a day, and when the two of them get going, neither one thinks a thing about it.

Plenty of fans don't think the accent ever fully leaves. One viewer who lives in Georgia says his everyday voice still sounds quite Southern, just not cranked up like the stage one. The top comment gets the last word, though. Next you're going to say he's not really a cable guy.