“Casting Director Jennifer Venditti’s Intuitive Touch in “The Sympathizer”
Casting director Jennifer Venditti had one of Hollywood’s great chameleons to work with when she was putting together the pieces for HBO’s limited series The Sympathizer. Robert Downey Jr. plays a quartet of characters in Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar’s adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as the Oscar-winning performer is in a constant swirl of dramatic action among performers less well-known but all of them entirely game.
Best of 2023: “Barbie” Casting Directors Allison Jones And Lucy Bevan on Populating Barbie Land
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
Since its release last month, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been hailed as a marvel of a balancing act between sincerity and hilarity. On top of the nuanced script, Barbieland is populated by a Barbie and Ken of every stripe, for every type, despite dozens of characters who share a mere two first names (plus the singular Allan).
“Killers of the Flower Moon” Casting Directors Ellen Lewis and Rene Haynes on Their Historic Oklahoma Casting Call
With its prodigiously detailed and complex production, long running time, and sprawling cast, Killers of the Flower Moon (in theaters now) cut no corners in telling the true story about members of Oklahoma’s oil-rich Osage Nation who were systematically murdered in the 1920s by white men eager to inherit “head rights” worth millions of dollars through marriage and trickery. To surround Leo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro’s duplicitous usurpers with authentic Native American talent,
Best of Summer 2023: Emmy-Nominated Casting Director Theo Park on Fielding the Perfect Squad for “Ted Lasso”
*It’s our annual “Best of Summer” look back at some (not all) of our favorite interviews from the past few months. This non-comprehensive look back includes the Barbenheimer phenomenon and the wonderful interviews that followed those two history-making films, chats with the talented folks behind Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, our profile of MPA Creator Award Recipient and filmmaker extraordinaire Gina Prince-Bythewood and more.
There isn’t an Oscars category for casting directors (yet),
Beyond the Craft With Emmy Nominees From “The Last of Us,” “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” & More
A ruined world, decimated by a fungi-borne plague and teeming with zombified hordes and hardened survivors who can be just as dangerous. A biopic about one of the all-time greatest musical tricksters who created an astonishingly successful career parodying hit songs. A reality show where contestants move into a palatial castle and need to cohere as a team to complete a series of increasingly difficult missions to earn big money, with some in the group committed to thwarting their ambitions from within.
Best of Summer 2023: “Barbie” Casting Directors Allison Jones And Lucy Bevan on Populating Barbie Land
*It’s our annual “Best of Summer” look back at some (not all) of our favorite interviews from the past few months. This non-comprehensive look back includes the Barbenheimer phenomenon and the wonderful interviews that followed those two history-making films, chats with the talented folks behind Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, our profile of MPA Creator Award Recipient and filmmaker extraordinaire Gina Prince-Bythewood and more.
Since its release last month, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been hailed as a marvel of a balancing act between sincerity and hilarity.
“Barbie” Casting Directors Allison Jones And Lucy Bevan on Populating Barbie Land
Since its release last month, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been hailed as a marvel of a balancing act between sincerity and hilarity. On top of the nuanced script, Barbieland is populated by a Barbie and Ken of every stripe, for every type, despite dozens of characters who share a mere two first names (plus the singular Allan). Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and her dependent Ken (Ryan Gosling) were early commitments to the Warner Bros.
Emmy-Nominated Casting Director Theo Park on Fielding the Perfect Squad for “Ted Lasso”
There isn’t an Oscars category for casting directors (yet), but the Emmys have recognized the foundational importance of the people who find actors with the talent and the chemistry to create magic on screen. Without casting directors, a lot of your favorite moments onscreen would likely never have happened.
In an interview with The Credits, two-time Emmy winner and current nominee Theo Park, nominated for her stellar work on Ted Lasso,
Marvel Studios Casting Director Sarah Finn on Finding the Heroes & Villains of the MCU
As we’ve done for the past few summers, we’ve compiled a few of our favorite interviews to highlight in this last week of August. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a little taste of some of the great conversations we’ve had during these hot summer months. Bring on sweater season.
She’s arguably the most powerful casting director in Hollywood, working alongside Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige and his team along with numerous directors to populate 28 superhero movies that have so far earned more than $25 billion at the box office.
“Thor: Love and Thunder” Casting Director Sarah Finn on Picking Stars for the Marvel Cinematic Universe
She’s arguably the most powerful casting director in Hollywood, working alongside Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige and his team along with numerous directors to populate 28 superhero movies that have so far earned more than $25 billion at the box office. Her name is Sarah Finn. She majored in Theater Studies at Yale, moved to Los Angeles and cast the Oscar-winning Crash. Then, in 2006, Finn got a call to meet with Feige about a little thing called Iron Man.
“Stranger Things” Casting Director Carmen Cuba on Finding Season 4’s New Faces
*There are spoilers for season 4 below, so proceed with caution if you’re not caught up!
With every new season of Stranger Things comes a new crop of teens to replace those ill-fated in prior seasons to the predations of the Upside Down that lurks under Hawkins. In addition, in Season 4, the show’s beloved original members are scattered across the globe, leaving room for new cast members to take on feature roles in Hawkins’ latest rescue.
Best of 2021: “King Richard” Casting Director Rich Delia on Finding Venus & Serena
This interview is part of our highly subjective, decidedly non-comprehensive “Best of 2021” year-end list. It was originally published on November 19.
The new film King Richard (Warner Bros.) halted shooting in March 2020 during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Although his work was done, Rich Delia, one of the project’s casting directors, was “sitting at home freaking out” over one thing:
“What if one of the girls goes through a growth spurt?”
The girls are,
“King Richard” Casting Director Rich Delia on Finding Venus & Serena
The new film King Richard (Warner Bros.) halted shooting in March 2020 during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Although his work was done, Rich Delia, one of the project’s casting directors, was “sitting at home freaking out” over one thing:
“What if one of the girls goes through a growth spurt?”
The girls are, of course, Venus and Serena Williams. King Richard tells the astonishing story of how Richard Williams struggled and then succeeded in transforming his daughters into two of the greatest tennis players of all time.
“The Flight Attendant” Casting Directors on Booking HBO’s High-Flying Series
The Flight Attendant casting directors John Papsidera, Beth Bowling, and Kim Miscia had to book HBO Max’s hit series long before HBO Max was even a known quantity. Yet these veterans managed to fill The Flight Attendant‘s planeload of superb performers and earned an Emmy nomination for their efforts.
The Flight Attendant‘s cast delivers on the thrills, chills, laughs, and spills—the latter mostly via the drunken shenanigans of Kaley Cuoco’s Cassie Bowden.
“Ted Lasso” Casting Director Theo Park on Filling Out AFC Richmond’s Roster
Who would have expected an earnest tale of an American football coach brought on to mind an English soccer team to be the pandemic’s breakout hit? Created by Jason Sudeikis, the titular star of Ted Lasso, the show’s joyful brand of storytelling is up for Emmy awards across the board.
Relentlessly upbeat, armed with a bottomless well of musical and literary trivia and a penchant for encouraging heart-to-hearts,
Allison Jones & Ben Harris On the Funny-Unfunny “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Casting Process
How do you cast a show where most household name actors play themselves and entire scenes are based on improv? Well, it’s complicated. To get on Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, now in its 10th season and booked to begin shooting Season 11 come fall, coronavirus permitting, you need to be funny, but you don’t have to be funny, and you definitely can’t seem to be trying to be funny. On actors who make it to an in-person audition,
How “Queer Eye” Casting Director Danielle Gervais Found the Perfect Team
Danielle Gervais had the daunting task of finding the new Fab Five when the iconic reality series Queer Eye was rebooted by Netflix for a new generation. The Emmy-winning casting director scoured America with her team to find Antoni Porowski (food and wine), Bobby Berk (interior design), Karamo Brown (culture), Jonathan Van Ness (grooming) and Tan France (fashion). Five seasons later, countless lives changed, and many tears shed in the process, Gervais reflects on how it all came together and why choosing a favorite ‘hero’ is like choosing a favorite child.
Under Lockdown, Tech & Film Meet in New Ways to Un-Stall an Industry on Hold
The first feature film made entirely over Zoom may still be a blessed long way off, but in accordance with COVID-19 social distancing procedures, formerly eschewed technologies are finding a current warm welcome among the film and television industry. Whether it’s a newfound acceptance of older, familiar names like Skype, or industry-specific digital tools being put to creative off-label uses, it’s thanks to technology that film crews can,
Casting Faces New and Old for Hundreds of Roles in The Irishman
Casting director Ellen Lewis has worked with Martin Scorsese since New York Stories, which came out in 1989, but there was no by-the-book process to adhere to in order to pull together the all-star ensemble leading The Irishman and the film’s hundreds of supporting roles. “Every world is different, so where you’re going to look and the way you’re going to think,” said Lewis, changes with each script. In this case,
How the Emmy-Nominated Casting Director of When They See Us Found Her Talent
Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us was an instant Netflix hit, which even the normally secretive streaming site revealed to viewers in a tweet. Unsurprisingly, the show is also among the Emmy’s leading contenders, nominated in the best limited-run series category and garnering nods for DuVernay’s writing and directing and Bradford Young’s cinematography, among others. The show’s many noms also include eight actors, with Jharrel Jerome (the only person in the series to take on his role,
