Chapter 3

Casting

Any director will tell you that casting is a huge part of the job. John Frankenheimer, director of The Manchurian Candidate and Birdman of Alcatraz, went so far as to put a number on it. He said, “Casting is 65 percent of directing.”¹ Why would he say that casting is more than half the job? It goes back to what we already talked about in the first two chapters: breaking down the script for story and character. You can’t cast unless you know what you need. Once you do, you need the additional skill of being able to recognize talent and suitability.

If you can do all these things, you will have the right faces on the screen to help you tell the story in the best way possible. To continue our metaphor of the story being the journey and the characters’ needs being the fuel for the trip, the cast members are the people who take the journey, and they have to serve your needs in two ways: as hired employees who can do the job and as artists who can bring their characters to life. Why mention both parts of the actor’s job? It’s the practical part of this book. For the same reason that we said a director has to be a leader with creative vision who understands and can execute the craft and who can physically and mentally handle the demands of the job, an actor must also be gifted in his craft and physically and mentally be able to handle the demands of the job.

We’ve all heard stories about “difficult” actors. Director John Badham even entitled one of his excellent books I’ll Be In My Trailer.² Mary Lou has a scale that she uses to decide whether she wants to work with an actor. The two things weighed are talent and degree of difficulty. The thing about her scale is that the degree-of-difficulty side must never outweigh the talent side. That being said, the degree of difficulty can be pretty darn high if the level of talent is too. Weighing the importance of getting our job done on time and on budget, it’s important to take into consideration when casting how well you’ll work with an actor. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”

Don’t get the wrong idea, Bethany and Mary Lou love actors. Mary Lou is married to one, has a son who acts, and Mary Lou used to be an actress herself. Both Bethany and Mary Lou have the reputation of being an actor’s director—a director who doesn’t merely move the camera but also fine-tunes the performances because she understands the actor’s process. In fact, for both directors, working with actors is the favorite part of their job.

As a television director, you will cast the series regulars (the actors that appear in each episode) only if you direct the pilot, or first episode, of a series. The exception to this is if a new character is added once the series has begun. A good example of this is Erica Durance, who played Lois Lane on the CW series Smallville, a series that began in 2001. She didn’t join the cast until 2004. This series, which has enjoyed success for over a decade, began with iconic Clark Kent in high school. The show didn’t add the Daily Planet characters until he got older. Greg L. Beeman, who directed the first episode (and was also a producer on the show) in which Lois appeared, was part of the casting process. Because Durance was going to be a new series regular, the network undoubtedly took a special interest in casting this role too.

CASTING ROLES OTHER THAN THE SERIES REGULARS

You may get to cast a character that will recur—appear in multiple episodes—usually for a specific story arc. Mary Lou did this many times over the course of the seven years she directed the show Girlfriends. More often than not, it was a new love interest: British actor Adrian Lester (Primary Colors, Redband Society, Hustle) recurred eight times over two seasons. Other actors stayed longer when their characters evolved from love interest to spouse: Jason Pace (My Trip to the Dark Side, Friends with Better Lives) played Dr. Todd Garrett for 30 episodes and married the Toni character played by Jill Marie Jones; Keesha Sharp (Everybody Hates Chris, Are We There Yet?) played Monica for 40 episodes and wed the William Dent character played by Reginald C. Hayes (Hart of Dixie).

The most common kind of role that you’ll be casting as an episodic director is a guest star or costar. A guest star part is larger, works more days, and earns more money. The biggest guest stars are sometimes referred to as top of show because that is where their screen credit appears when the show airs, as opposed to the smaller roles that are listed in the end credits. Top of show also refers to the basic salary cap, as negotiated by the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG/AFTRA). Salaries of well-known actors can break that top of show ceiling if the production company or network is willing to pay for it. The size of the role, and how much the actor is paid for it, often have to do with an actor’s fame or TVQ, that is, TV quotient, or how well known they are. What an actor was paid for his last appearance is known as his quote. Obviously, an actor would prefer to meet or improve his quote, rather than negotiate something lower. In addition to negotiating salary, there is also the negotiable issue of billing, or credit. The top of show guest usually gets a single card credit, which is his name on the screen alone, again depending on the guest’s TVQ. Other guest stars and costars get a shared card, that is, their name on the screen with others. Why do you need to know this?

All these things matter to an actor who is plotting the strategy by which he will advance his career. An established actor may love the role in a show, but if the part isn’t big enough, or if he will not get the billing wanted, the actor may not take the part or even audition for it. Another option is for the actor to take the part, but remain uncredited.

Negotiations are the responsibility of the casting director, under the supervision of the producers. The casting director is the department head who uses her creative judgment in seeking out the pool of actors who will audition for the parts indicated in the script. You will have a casting concept meeting at the beginning of prep, along with the writer and/or the showrunner, to communicate initial thoughts about the characters: what type of physicality you might be looking for, including age range and ethnicity, and what type of “feel” is needed. The writer may indicate who she had in mind while writing the part, and at this point, it matters not if that actor is available—he will serve as an archetype, creating a focus for discussion between you and the casting director. It’s sort of like doing the casting version of the vision board that we discussed in the last chapter.

There are also other types of casting called stunt casting, which has nothing to do with stunts, and crossover casting, which has nothing to do with casting. The website Celebuzz defines stunt casting as, “Hiring a huge celebrity for a small part on your TV series in hopes that the guest appearance will jump start both your fortunes.”³ This definition is a rather jaded way of looking at it, even though commerce is always a consideration: the network is always looking for a guest star that is promotable. More often than not, though, the celeb is doing a favor for the lead on the series or the network and is happy to appear because they like the show or want a chance to work with the series lead. This was often the case when Tony Shalhoub would ask such fine actors as David Strathairn, Stanley Tucci, Tim Curry, and Gena Rowlands to appear on Monk. Because Tony is such a splendidly fine actor himself, he attracted other distinguished talent. On the first season finale of black-ish, the club owner/ruthless gangster was played by rapper/record producer Sean “Diddy” Combs. Mary Lou has also had the pleasure of working with basketball players Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Denis Rodman, attorney Johnny Cochran, and prima ballerina Gelsey Kirkland and rappers Common and Missy Elliot when they were stunt-cast. In every case, the networks took advantage of the celebrity’s popularity to promote the show.

Crossover casting doesn’t require any casting because it is a part given to an actor who is doing another show for that same network. Often the actor is playing the same character, but on the other show. Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice did this often: a doctor from the Seattle show would come down to L.A. in the story line or vice versa. It cross-promotes both shows and makes both episodes “event” television, which will hopefully draw a bigger audience.

Here is the reality of television: You are not the only person who is making this casting decision, because the ultimate bosses (those who provide the money) get the final vote. The Directors Guild of America (DGA) negotiates creative rights to guarantee that you are part of the casting process, so you should participate to the furthest extent possible, which helps preserve the right for every future director while claiming it for yourself.

As a freelance director, you will be blending with the production team, which probably already has a way of working. Don’t wait for the casting director to call your assistant director (AD) to tell you when the first casting session is scheduled. Call the casting director and introduce yourself. You can chat about previous guest stars cast on the show. The casting director will be flattered that you bothered to notice and will know you value the casting director’s work. Because the casting department gets the script sooner than other departments (sometimes even before the director), you can tell them how you see a part and, conversely, pick their brains to find out if the writer or producers have suggested to them any information about how they see the roles to be cast.

THE PROCESS OF CASTING AND MAKING THE ACTORS’ DEALS

Your job of casting will start on paper, especially with the top of the show guest stars or stunt casting. The casting director will do a substantial amount of work to generate lists of actors whom you might want to consider for the role. These lists often include the name of the actor’s talent agent, availability, and whether the actor is willing to audition or will consider an offer only. Generating such a list is a huge amount of work. Always be appreciative and acknowledge the work and creativity that went into generating the casting availability lists.

If you want the casting department to bring in specific actors you know, give them a list with adequate time to set up an audition. If the casting department is not familiar with an actor’s work, they might set up a preread, or preliminary audition, at which only the casting director, not the director or the producers, is present. Because cameras are so readily available to actors, casting directors will often watch self-taped auditions sent to them from actors who don’t have agents or couldn’t make it to a casting session.

Casting is the first time you come into contact with the actor. The casting session you attend, scheduled by the casting director or one of her assistants, may be the first, second, or third time that the actor has come to audition for this role. More established actors come straight to the producer session, the audition that you first attend, so called because in addition to you, there will also be a producer present—often the writer of the episode—or a writing producer who oversees casting. The executive producer or showrunner, often the show’s creator, might also be present at casting. The star of the show—especially if he is an executive producer—may also come to casting and choose to read with the actors if the shooting schedule permits.

Actors are scheduled in timed intervals. They come into the room and are introduced by the casting director. As you greet them, you are handed their picture and resume. There may be time for small talk, but more often than not, it is straight to the job of auditioning. Sometimes the audition will be taped, but not always. The audition is almost always one actor reading the role for which they are auditioning and the casting director reading all the other characters in the scene.

After the actor finishes reading, he thanks you and leaves, unless you want to see him read the scene(s) again with an acting adjustment that you give. You should do this only when you are seriously interested in an actor. There simply isn’t enough time to do it for every actor. For example, you may think the actor looks perfect for the part, but did not agree with his performance choices. Tell him what you want instead, and see if he can deliver that. The best way to communicate this change (adjustment) to the actor is to refer to either their intention or their obstacle: “I’d like to see you play the obstacle [like being afraid to speak up to an authority figure, let’s say] more strongly.” You don’t have to get into a big discussion or give the whole backstory. Give the actor something specific to do, and then ask if you’ve made yourself clear. If not, the actor will ask a question, and you can clarify your request. And then the actor takes a deep breath, makes the internal calibration, and reads the scene again. Thank him, compliment him if you can do it honestly (“Good adjustment!”), and smile at him with the empathy you hold for his courage in putting himself before you for judgment.

After the actor has left the room, you will either discuss the audition or wait until you’ve seen every actor that has come in for that role being auditioned that day. In deference to his responsibility for telling the story, the director states his preferences first, and then the discussion begins. More often than not, there is a consensus among those attending the session about who should get the part. Or if there isn’t, the folks in the room may review the taped auditions together to reach consensus. You may see a detail in an actor’s audition while reviewing a taped audition that you did not see while you were in the room watching the actor live. After reviewing the tape, there may be an embarrassment of riches and there are too many actors who will do the part ably. Or, more problematic, you haven’t seen anyone who is right for the part and the casting director has to schedule another session. If another session is necessary, specifically talk about why the people you saw were not right. It may be that there is a specific moment that none of the actors filled or fleshed out. It may be something as simple as that you conceived the role as younger or older than the actors you’ve already seen. The casting director can also serve as a coach to the next batch of actors who come in to audition and guide them to the performance you want. At the very least, the casting director can give feed back to the actor’s agent about his client’s audition.

For smaller roles, especially under 5s (roles with five lines or fewer), you may receive a DVD of a casting session that you did not attend or a link to a casting website where the taped auditions are uploaded. This type of review is done to avoid wasting your time during prep. (But if you are not overloaded in prep, you should express your preference for holding a casting session, during which you can give adjustments if needed. A personal session is always better than a recorded one for you to pick exactly the right actor for the part.) You should look at the link as soon as time allows and inform the casting director of your choices. Also tell her if you have a second or even third choice based on what you’ve seen. If you don’t have a strong feeling and all the actors who read were equally qualified for the job, remember that the casting director is part of your team and defer to her opinion about who should be cast. There may be an extenuating circumstance that might influence whom she suggests casting in a role. Casting directors are people who have friends or may want to help out an actor who is struggling to earn the last few hundred dollars that qualify the actor for health insurance for his family.

If a casting director asks you to see an actor again whom you’ve already seen (or don’t particularly visualize in the role), by all means, do so. The casting director is probably more familiar with that actor’s work, just because it’s her job to know the talent pool. Acting is hard. It takes talent, craft, intelligence, and vulnerability. The skill set it takes to audition is not necessarily the same skill set it takes to do the job.

Trust that your casting director understands the actors’ craft as well as the business side of her job. If the casting director sees potential in an actor whom you didn’t think performed well in the casting session, be open to looking at that actor with the additional information the casting director has to offer. That actor may be the perfect person for the role and it may be something as simple as the actor was having a bad day or something as big as that actor is out of rehab and is trying to resurrect his career and was just nervous. It has happened. We all know those stories.

FIGHTING FOR YOUR CASTING CHOICES

You may not like an actor whom the executive producer or the network really wants in a role. How do you deal with this issue, which may be the first of many political situations that you will have to navigate? We talk more about this is in Section Four of this book. If you think you can sway their thinking at all, we suggest that you use your position as director to openly discuss their idea—not because it is a bad choice, but because you have a better one. Do it carefully.

Compliment the other’s idea, but be more enthusiastic about somebody else on the list. For example, you may reference a particular story point or moment because of your familiarity with the script and then suggest how you see another actor (or type of actor, usually referring to age or ethnicity), making that moment work better. Remember that disagreement probably has nothing to do with whether their choice of actor is talented. It’s about appropriateness and you telling the story. Sometimes your passion may sell it, sometimes not. If you can enlist the help of the showrunner and have a united front, you might say, “We just don’t see the audience believing him/her doing this.” Sometimes time and money will be your friend, when the casting department isn’t able to make a deal and agree on dates or terms with someone you don’t want in the role.

LEARNING BY WATCHING

If you don’t have much experience in casting, there are a couple things that you can do. First, try to sit in on a casting session for something you are not directing. If you get this opportunity, it is important to not share your opinion unless asked. Just be a fly on the wall. You will learn a lot by just watching. What you can do, though, is ask whether you can read the script. Then you will have the benefit of knowing the story and exploring how you would have cast it. But don’t be offended if you are not allowed to see the script because many shows guard the written word or sharing information about upcoming storylines like a Brink’s truck full of cash … and to a network, their product is that valuable. On The Sopranos, even recurring characters did not get the whole script—only the pages for the scenes they were in. If you don’t read the script, you can often piece together information about the story from the different scenes you see in the audition, especially if a lot of characters are being cast.

LEARNING BY FANTASY CASTING

The second thing you can do is practice casting for a fantasy project. We’re not talking about fantasy as a genre, just any project that isn’t really going to happen. Here’s an exercise you can do over and over again.

TRAPS TO AVOID

One thing we want to caution about casting: don’t fall into the trap of going for a “look,” rather than casting a better actor. In our experience, it is always safer to cast a better actor in a role than someone who simply looks right for the part.

There are a couple reasons for this. First, with a good actor, you always have credibility: your audience will believe him in the role because that is what good acting is all about—“acting as if.” If your actor becomes the character and breathes life into the role he is playing, the audience will accept him, too. The added benefit is that you have the chance to break a stereotype in the process.

For example, not all bullies are big; not all dumb girls are blond. Bethany directed an episode of The Cleaner in which the main guest star part was a young man, in the process of becoming a woman, who had a drug addiction and worked as a cheap prostitute. The producers wanted a smaller-boned actor so that the transgender aspect would be more believable. The best actor for the part, however, was over six feet tall and well-muscled. But Bethany felt that he was the only actor who auditioned that could bring the severe internal conflicts of the character to life. So she fought for Reiley McClendon and assured the producers that she’d make it work. While casting the extras who were portraying prostitutes on the street corner in physical proximity to Reiley, she cast women who were exceptionally tall and added to that height by putting them in four-inch heels. So the tall actor whose character was masquerading as a woman did not look out of place. And he was brilliant.

You might also enter a casting session with no preconceived ideas about a role and find an actor who brings that character to life for you. The prolific Steven Bochco, who created NYPD Blue, LA Law, and Hill Street Blues, said “Casting is sort of like looking at paintings. You don’t know what you’ll like, but you recognize it when you see it.”⁴ Bethany was casting a TV movie years ago, looking for the antagonist in a women’s prison story called Locked Up: A Mother’s Rage. Multiple actresses had read for the part over many days, and no one seemed right, until a young and unknown Angela Bassett (What’s Love Got to Do with It, How Stella Got Her Groove Back) came in and just nailed it. As the door closed behind Angela, Bethany jumped up and said, “That’s it! She’s it! Now I can make this movie!”

THE MAGIC OF CASTING

There is so much about casting that is intuitive: that feeling in the gut, the hairs that stand up on your arms, the prickle on the back of your neck. You know it when you see it. The actor makes you believe that he inhabits the part: that he is the character.

But sometimes there is an actor who is close to being perfect in the audition. Where your skill comes into play is knowing whether you can take the raw material that the actor presents and form it into the character you’re looking for. Can you speak the simple, perfect words that provide the key to making a good actor great? You’ll find out more about how to do that in Chapter 10. But never forget where the magic starts, as we’ve discussed in these first three chapters. As director Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society, Master and Commander) said, “If you’ve cast the picture right and you don’t have script problems—those are the two essentials—then on the day you have this little piece of life in the story you’re telling and anything can happen.”⁵

There is a wonderful secondary benefit to casting. You find out who the best actor is for the part, but you also find out more about the story by watching gifted actors bring their inter pretations of the role to the casting session. The actors’ readings help the director discover the strengths and weaknesses of material (after you’ve listened to it twenty times, you can usually put your finger on the problem) and clarify hazy notions of intention and obstacle. Plus, it’s fun. It’s a place to play, to experiment, to hone in on your interpretation of the script as you give adjustments to actors. You see what works and what doesn’t. It’s a crucial part of prep, and an amazing gift to the director!

NOTES

1  Jerry Roberts. “John Frankenheimer and the Playing of Reindeer Games,” DGA Monthly, 24, March 2000.

2  John Badham. I’ll Be in My Trailer. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 2006.

3  The Top Ten Television Stunt Casting Stints, Celebuzz, July 26, 2008.

4  Steven Bochco Quotes, Brainy Quotes, retrieved May 1, 2011, from www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/steven_bochco.html.

5  Terrence Rafferty. “Uncommon Man,” DGA Quarterly, Summer 2010, pp. 30–37.

6  Holly Powell. The Audition Bible. Los Angeles: Tavin Press, 2014, pp. 166–168.

7  Dee LaDuke and Mark Alton Brown. Gardner’s Guide to Writing and Producing Television. New York: GCC Publishing, 2007, pp. 137–139.