title: String with a "b" prefix on records with accent
body: <p>When I dump the property of my model and it has an accent it returns with this &quot;b&quot; prefix</p>
  <pre><code>dump($venda_item-&gt;produto-&gt;nomeproduto); // b&quot;teste téste&quot;
  </code></pre>
  <p>My database is setted to utf8 and utf8_general_ci collation</p>
  <p>This causes me the following error <code>Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly incorrectly encoded</code> when I'm returning the response in json, at this line</p>
  <pre><code>$json_response = Response::json($response, $this-&gt;getStatusCode(), $headers);
  </code></pre>
  <h1>Update</h1>
  <p>I discovered that if I die and dump the record on the web route it shows normal <code>teste téste</code></p>
  <pre><code>Route::get('/', function () {
      dd(App\Vendasitem::where('codigovi', 112685)-&gt;first()-&gt;produto-&gt;nomeproduto);
  }
  </code></pre>
  <p>otherwise if I do the same in the controller or request and other files that I tryied it keeps returning me with the &quot;b&quot; prefix</p>
  <h1>Update 2</h1>
  <p>If I save my record like this <code>PROMO - VIRICAPS (GUARANÃ¡ + POLIVIT) 60 CÃ¡PS - CAIXA 18 UND</code> and <code>dump($venda_item-&gt;produto-&gt;nomeproduto);</code> it returns me the right result with the accents.</p>
  <p>All my database, including the column is set up to <code>utf8mb4</code> and <code>utf8mb4_unicode_ci</code></p>