Toppa Top 10: Hollywood’s Worst Fake Jamaican Accents

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 +1
October 11, 2011


1. Philip Michael Thomas in Miami Vice
miami-vice-rico-tubbs

As the ethnically ambiguous half of Miami Vice‘s buddy cop equation, the job requirements for Philip Michael Thomas’ Ricardo Tubbs included lots of affected international accents on undercover investigations. Thing was Thomas’ laughable patois would have gotten any real detective 187’ed faster than you can shout “Narc!” Tubbs was supposed to be from the Bronx, but Thomas couldn’t even get that right, pronouncing “New York” like a drunken Bostonian stumbling out of Fenway Park after an extra-inning loss to the Yankees: New Yahhhhk. But it is Tubbs’ woefully misguided and under-rehearsed Jamaican accent—first unveiled in the pilot episode’s infamous strip club scene below—that’s the stuff of legend.