The success of the Northern Irish TV show Derry Girls seems partly due to its authentic portrayal
of the English spoken in Northern Ireland and, more particularly, in Derry. This paper examines how authentic the performance of
the Northern Irish accent by Ma Mary, one of the characters in the comedy, is from the points of view of produced and perceived
authenticity. In order to determine the degree of produced authenticity, I investigate whether the pronunciation features present
in Ma Mary’s speech are characteristic of Northern Irish English (NIE). On the other hand, an experiment has been designed to test
the perceived authenticity of Ma Mary’s performed accent. The experiment consists of asking Northern Irish people to rate a short
recording in terms of how authentic its representation of the NIE accent is. The results from the experiment confirm that the
accent performed by Ma Mary is authentically Northern Irish.
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