In the studio, I don’t do a lot of work that requires repetitive activity. I spend a lot of time looking and thinking and then try to find the most efficient way to get what I want, whether it’s making a drawing or a sculpture, or casting plaster or whatever.
Transgender casting is a kind of literalism. It is the same with racial casting. This means that you can now only play Othello if you are black. There is something quite tainted about it. It is a form of racism in itself.
It’s a little like casting out hundreds of fishing lines into the audience. You start getting little bites, then more, then you hook a few, then more. Then you can start reeling them in and that’s a loveliest feeling – the whole audience laughing with you.
One day, I met Luv Ranjan through a casting agent. That was the best day of my life. After my family, he is the only person who I trust and have faith in.
I’ve done a movie called ‘Lemonade Mouth’ for Disney Channel, which was fun to do. I actually got discovered through an open casting call where anyone could audition.
Casting is a convoluted kind of trip. No one likes to be typed – even if you’re a cab driver, or whatever you do.
I mean, life is kind of like your own movie. You collect your characters to play your friends or acquaintances, your lovers. You’re the casting director of your own life.
I always look for innovative casting and that’s why I seek directors, whether in Bollywood or regional films, who are keen to make something different.
I think the location is almost as important as casting the leads of the movie. The location on ‘The Purge’ was crucial to that movie working.
The first heart you win over is that casting director. In first meetings, they’ll be the ones who see your pitch for the character. And then as you get further up, they’ll be the ones reading with you in front of the network.
I was the first person in the world to audition for ‘The Hobbit’. The casting director told me that when I went in. That’s a lot of pressure, isn’t it? The first person in the world.
Casting Captain America is really casting two roles… Steve Rogers before and after the transformation from 98 pound weakling to perfect physical specimen. I can’t divulge how we’re going to do it, but the performance will be Chris Evans from beginning to end.
Casting me as King Arthur was quite bold of ‘Spamalot’s producers, although it has been historically proved Arthur was Asian, and that Sunday trading started with Asians in 11th-century Britain.
Casting director was a part-time thing, which later became a full-time job because there was a lack of casting directors in our industry and people were looking for professionals to do it.
How you look is part of what acting is, but the way I look at it, every actor is a character actor. Someone once told me at a casting, ‘You’re a character actor in a leading man’s body,’ and I can live with that.
It’s weird: making a movie is like life compacted into three months. You have these very intense relationships with people, and you talk to them every day – your editor, the casting people, music people, your actors – then it ends. It’s like a circus life.
People don’t always understand the way it works with casting. TV projects tend to be commissioned to screen at a particular time of year, so your shooting dates are chosen to meet that. And then the casting is a matter of choosing from the actors who are available for those dates.
Musical chairs or Russian roulette? Sometimes there’s as much tense drama in the casting of a Hollywood movie as there is in the finished product.
I once literally had a casting director ask my agent, ‘Can she play anything other than a drunk?’
There is casting couch in the Malayalam industry.
You can be technically strong, and focus all your efforts on elements like casting, music, cinematography and sets, but they are all just add ons. End of the day, filmmaking is really about how well you tell a story.
For female directors, there’s a whole other set of things we have to think about, particularly when we are casting men, because there are some actors who have never been directed by a woman. Crew members, too.
Are you casting asparagus on my cooking?
I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me – being mixed race – because casting directors tended to be very like, ‘OK, are you Hispanic for this role?’ ‘Or is she going to be African American?’
Getting a casting means that a lot of people have put a lot of faith in you and your abilities, and you constantly think ‘I hope I don’t let them down.’
Local casting is just something I love doing.
I worked in feature film casting right out of college and spent a lot of time working with actors, directors, and producers.
A friend of my mom’s was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.
I used to be very shy. When I first started, I had to go to a casting, and I had to go in a bikini. I thought I was too skinny. But I went in and got the job! And that’s how I started.
No, I’m not too worried about type casting.
There’s always a wild card or two when you’re casting. I’m usually the wild card. In a room of Caucasian guys, a director might be like, ‘OK, let’s see, like, two guys who aren’t. And maybe they’ll be the wild card choice.’
I don’t discriminate against straight or gay people in casting; I’m open to good acting.
In my last year of drama school, I was Abigail in ‘The Crucible’ and Nina in ‘The Seagull,’ and I did some Shakespeare with the RSC. That’s what casting directors saw me in, and I got put up for a lot of period drama auditions. I always get told I suit the costumes. I don’t think I have a very modern-looking face.
My first exposure to TV, film, theater, the idea of what acting was, is I was a little kid, and my mom’s best friend was a local casting director in Cambridge, Mass. Her name was Patty Collinge.
Bernard Manning is controversial but he had incredible timing. I wrote the character of Brian Potter in ‘Phoenix Nights’ for him to play but unfortunately he was too poorly to do it. I thought it would have been perfect casting but it didn’t happen.
I think for my casting of ‘Pati Patni Aur Woh’ the makers saw my ad film which I did for a brand and they decided to cast me in the film.
It has been a fairy tale for an outsider, bouncing from one film set to another, choosing my films as assertively as those films chose me. And through this journey I have not once faced the dreaded syndrome of the ‘casting couch.’
Theatre has always been better disposed to colourblind casting than telly or film. Given that most television is contemporary, and it reaches 56 million people, I am disappointed there still isn’t more representation.
Working on script development, casting, editing, and music is incredibly inspiring to me, and it’s wonderful to see something you love come to life.
In 1965, I was teaching a seminar on freedom when I told my students that the ultimate freedom lay in casting a dice to decide what to do. They were so shocked and fascinated that I knew I had to write the book.
Be it a cameo, a character role or a lead role, I am happy that people are finally recognising my acting calibre and are casting me in their films.
‘Mariah’ was the first series-regular role for me, and that really came about because of ‘Secret Honor.’ That really was a direct result of that. Because now I had an agent and was submitted for that part, for James Malone. And… I was the casting director’s first choice for James Malone.
I had a casting director tell me to be blacker.
There’s no set formula of success in Bollywood and one needs to be constantly in touch with the casting directors to get hold of the right opportunities.
It is not like casting me in your movie is going to help you get financing.
Casting directors said that I look like an urban girl with sharp features. Maybe that is true, but we are living at a time where a lot of advanced make-up techniques are available.
When there’s no technical problems, if you did the right casting, and the scene is well written, the actor will give you a strong performance with his intuition right from the start.
Obviously, I did a couple of things right on the old casting couch.
I’ve not been discriminated against, but I can see it happen. And not just race but gender and sexuality, too. It’s stereotyping, lazy casting, which is an issue: that people can’t see outside the box.
If you build a robot, you’re welding, machining sculpting, casting, dealing with electronics and hydraulics.
It might sound cowardly, but I do agree that if you speak out about the casting couch, it will end your career.
If you’re writing a screenplay for a feature, you don’t have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.
I don’t know how much of the ‘casting couch’ exists in the industry, as I’ve not seen it myself. I’m glad that I’ve not had to.
There couldn’t possibly be a more label-driven industry than acting, seeing as every audition comes with a character breakdown: ‘Beautiful, sassy, Latina, 20s’; ‘African American, urban, pretty, early 30s’; ‘Caucasian, blonde, modern girl next door’. Every role has a label; every casting is for something specific.
