With ‘The Leftovers,’ I was actually super, super lucky. It was my first major audition. When I came out, the casting director was kissing me on the face, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s probably a good sign.’
In actuality, there was casting for the show and it was pretty difficult.
Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director’s point of view.
You have to remind casting directors out here that you don’t just do one thing. There’s a lot of people who do just one thing.
My university organised a casting call for a film and I won the role. I played a character who was dying of cancer. I remember in the middle of shooting going, ‘Oh my God! Why did I decide to do this?’ But people noticed me in it and I started getting invited to castings.
I remember when I started modelling and being the only non-white girl in the fashion show. I was grateful to be there, but at the casting, there had been many beautiful women of different descriptions, and I was wondering why they were not being represented.
I’ve always thought that as long as directors and casting directors don’t see me as just Harry Potter, I’ll be OK. People have shown a lot of faith in me, and I owe them a huge debt. They’re letting me prove that I’m serious about this.
I’d make a terrible casting director.
My agent set up a meeting with George Lucas. They were casting in England.
One of the bibles of my youth was ‘Birds of the West Indies,’ by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, ‘My God, that’s the dullest name I’ve ever heard,’ so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one.
When you talk to people in retrospect, they always say the casting was a no-brainer, but nothing really is. You have to have so many things line up. I’m very grateful that it worked out.
I overcame all the casting couches and stood out strongly as an independent woman.
Nina Gold is a fantastic casting director. She’s doing the new ‘Star Wars’ movies, but she also does ‘Game of Thrones’ and many of the Working Title movies, and she did ‘Rush.’
I think a film is made with each and every cast member. If the casting is strong, half our job is done. Then, even the mundane line is delivered in a great fashion.
We need to encourage the presence of more Asian writers and executive producers so they can fight for normalizing the casting of Asians in traditional American roles.
When I realized that nothing is perfect and no one is perfect, I was able to overcome my initial fears. I was holding myself to some weird standard that I was putting outside of myself, i.e., the director or casting director – they’re not expecting perfection. I had all these strange trappings I would put myself in.
I think that casting is probably the most important thing in television production.
There was a moment when we were casting ‘Groundhog Day’ when Bill Murray was not at the top of my list. He’d been getting crankier and crankier. By the end of ‘Ghostbusters II’, he was pretty cranky. I thought, ‘Do I want to put up with this for twelve weeks?’
It would have been an interesting run if we hadn’t gotten along! It was good casting, I suppose.
Honestly, in retrospect, when I referred to the actors from ‘Prince’ as non-actors or non-professionals, it was actually a great disservice to them. The fact is that they are all actors and should be viewed that way by the industry. It was our casting process that was non-professional.
The greatest thing about having done ‘Orange’ are the doors that have opened for me, and people have been able to see me, like the executives and the casting directors – also, all of the fantastic directors and writers for independent films.
I vividly remember my first interaction with Sir Richard Attenborough, I was in my final year at NSD (National School of Drama) in 1979, and casting director Dolly Thakore got in touch with me. We weren’t supposed to work outside NSD but special permission was granted to the students who were shortlisted for the audition.
When you’re shy, the worst thing you can do is go into all these casting rooms and be scrutinized. But with shyness, I think you just have to bite the bullet.
I think that anytime you’re doing casting and you’re casting something that has a lot of existing fans you’re going to get a lot of opinions about whether it matches fans vision.
When ‘The Master’ came around, they said they wanted to try and find a part for me, and I got a text from the casting director saying that.
There’s no better gift to an actor than when you walk into an audition, and the casting director is your partner.
I’m interested in colour-blind hiring of directors, producers, and writers. Go to the source. Then we won’t need to have conversations about colour-blind casting.
My mum brought me to my first job when I was 12. I started electrical work at her plant. She was an engineer, a technical expert, at one of the plants in the south, and in the summer she brought me in and I learnt how industrial things work: casting, electricity, maintenance, everything.
I went in and auditioned for one of the main guys for ‘The League’ when it was first casting, and I was so excited because I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is my life!’ I love fantasy football, and I play with my buddies, and my wife is frustrated with it.
A lot of times in Hollywood, when casting directors find out you’re of Middle Eastern descent, they go, ‘Oh, you’re Iranian? Great. Can you say, ‘I will kill you in the name of Allah?” I could say that, but what if I were to say, ‘Hello, I’m your doctor.’
Earlier in my career, I needed to be the writer, casting director, set designer, leading man, and producer. I’ve been eliminating a lot of those jobs. I’m an executive producer right now. I still get to pick the best screenplays.
I was working live TV, things like the ‘My Favorite Husband’ series, when I heard about this ‘Gunsmoke’ casting. I had been a fan of its radio show. I was a real pushy broad. I got myself all gussied up and sat in the producer’s office ’til I got tested.
Casting can be heartbreaking. Dealing with the disappointment is the hardest part.
The casting couch exists in every business where there is power dynamics and manipulation.
When I first started out, I found it really hard to be rejected all the time. You invest in a casting, you prepare and get excited about it, then when I fail and don’t get it, it makes me question whether I should be a model.
After completing my graduation, I went to Mumbai and started working as an assistant casting director. I worked on films like ‘Talaash,’ ‘Ek Mai Aur Ekk Tu,’ ‘Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani’ and ‘Student Of The Year,’ among others.
My first job in L.A. was actually playing an employee in a Best Buy commercial, but I played a bad employee at another store. I also worked at a commercial casting company running cameras and session directing.
I was modeling while I was in university and my agency said, ‘There’s this fashion campaign, can you go?’ And I didn’t want to; I told him I wanted to focus on my acting, but I ended up going, kind of dragging my feet, and it turns out, the casting director for it was the casting director for Lars von Trier’s new movie.
People have nervous tics they don’t know about, and I would advise asking around. Ask the casting director, ‘Is there something I’m doing?’ I would see people unconsciously rocking back and forth. I roll my lips. I bite my lips and roll them.
Music has to be treated in the same way as set design, casting, or choice of location – it has to start at the same time.
I’ve now been doing this for ten years, and I actually got to skip a stage of going to casting directors, and now I meet with the directors, either for lunch or an audition room, and I still read sides; you’re never going to get around that, but I’m not the best person to go on an audition.
Many of the crew members I work with and continue to work with were friends or have become close friends, and so we keep working together. And I like casting friends of mine or people I know in parts I know would be perfect for them. I like to bring things and people that mean something to me in to my work.
I used Vamps as a casting couch! I pretty much did, because I was casting ‘L!fe Happens’ while I was on the set of Vamps, and anybody I had ever worked with, I asked to be in this movie.
If I am part of a movie, the character I handle should make sense to me at first and should also be convincing to the audiences, in terms of casting.
If we can be sure of anything, it’s that the immense challenges faced by our country and our nation cannot be solved by the same people in the same offices, casting the same votes for the same failed policies.
When you’re that age – that middle-school age, early high school – you’re changing. You’re going crazy. So I put all of my energy into pretending I was someone else, battling and screaming and all that stuff – casting spells and getting into a whole fantasy world. It was really healthy for me.
I have a very simple philosophy when it comes to casting, and it really is casting the best person for the role.
I always prioritize dark-skinned women when I’m casting my music videos. I just believe that we deserve to be front and center. I never like to make the girls I choose look like backup.
