What does a casting director do? It’s one of the most important roles on any film or TV production, but there are a lot of misconceptions about the job. At IndieWire and Disney’s Pass the Remote panel on April 1 — a giddy TV FYC event that put top casting directors Tiffany Little Canfield, Josh Einsohn, Wendy O’Brien, Danielle Aufiero, Seth Yanklewitz, and Julie Ashton in front of a packed theater at Vidiots in Los Angeles — Yanklewitz said some people even think he and his peers are inherently “mean.”
“There are so many misconceptions,” said Yanklewitz about the business of casting. An industry veteran with credits on “New Girl,” “Black Hawk Down,” and more, Yanklewitz recently cast Hulu’s hit crime comedy “Deli Boys” for Pakistani-American creator Abdullah Saeed. Yanklewitz explained how a crash course in South Asian history helped make the casting process both more authentic and more inventive.
“We are always thinking and plotting and planning and learning and rooting for you,” Yanklewitz said of the relationship between casting directors and actors. After finding several key performers for “Deli Boys,” Yanklewitz and his casting partner Ben Pollack also auditioned those actors’ friends and families with great results. “We want you to be successful, and we know how to get actors jobs,” he said.
“You want the embarrassment of riches,” agreed Danielle Aufiero, whose past TV work includes “The Baby-Sitters Club,” “On My Block,” and more. She also cast the 2011 Sundance film “Sound of My Voice” and considers it a favorite. “You want everyone to be amazing, and then you have to choose which one.”
Representing the docudrama “Good American Family” at Pass the Remote, Aufiero explained how the show’s worldwide search for its star Imogen Faith Reid benefited from a lot of choice. The unique role required a performer who could pass as young as age 7 and as old as 22 — a strange consequence of the real case that inspired the series. The thorny but true adoption story of Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian woman born with dwarfism, was still going through U.S. courts when Aufiero was casting the show.
“Nobody actually knew Natalia’s real age [then],” she said. “So we saw the whole range just to kind of figure out who could make both work, and it was very clear the seven-year-olds couldn’t pull off the 22-year-old part. Slowly through the process, Imogen rose to the top and gosh, she’s really killing it.” Aufiero described Reid’s “Good American Family” co-stars Ellen Pompeo and Mark Duplass as an “amazing support system” for the 27-year-old actress.
“Everybody that walks in you want to knock it out of the park,” echoed Wendy O’Brien. The “Abbott Elementary” casting director argued that good actors make casting directors and their departments look good too. “Then you cast [the show] in a day, which can be done,” she said.
Working on Quinta Brunson’s beloved mockumentary, O’Brien routinely auditions adults and children. That became a more streamlined process as the show found its tone and potential actors learned what to expect in an “Abbott Elementary” audition, she said. Still, O’Brien offered free wisdom when she said of kid actors, “Number one piece of advice for a parent: If they don’t want to go, don’t make them.”
A testament to finding TV actors their perfect home onscreen, O’Brien saw two of her most enduring projects collide when “Abbott Elementary” crossed over with “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in Season 4. Adding characters to a well-known storytelling world is a special kind of alchemy but done right that chemistry is an explosive gift that keeps on giving.
“It was such good fortune that they were both shows that I worked on,” O’Brien said. “There was definitely the version they shot that was not the original version or the original pitch, but I think it was just a really wonderful cross-pollination of great people and horrible people.”
Starring Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and the late Linda Lavin, the new sitcom “Mid-Century Modern” is proof that some roles are truly meant for some actors. Julie Ashton, who described Lavin as like a “sister” to her, recalled how casting the legendary actress on the sitcom set in Palm Springs before her sudden passing last December reflected the magic of matching the right person with the right character.
“We miss her every single day,” said Ashton through tears. The comedy — coincidentally about living well in the face of grief — addressed Lavin’s passing in a poignant episode the casting director called her proudest professional moment. Ashton also mentioned significant obstacles that faced the cast and crew after the destructive Los Angeles wildfires in January.
“It’s the most difficult thing in the world to have to wrap your brain around losing somebody who has become your family and one of your closest friends — and also you’ve got a show to make,” Ashton said. “But Linda, I know we all heard her saying, ‘The show must go on!’ That’s who she was, the biggest pro we’ve ever worked with.”
Having cast the “Wicked” movie and more zeitgeist-making moments, Tiffany Little Canfield still thinks of “Only Murders in the Building” as a “dream.” Praising the infectious chemistry of Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin, Little Canfield said, “It’s a show where your bucket list, which is supposed to take your entire career to get, you’re just like, ‘Well, that was Season 3.’”
Bringing in all-time talents from Meryl Streep to Molly Shannon, Little Canfield nodded to the intense contract work required behind the scenes to cast top roles on the buzzy whodunit. She quipped, “Their auditions were not that good, but the negotiations I’ll never forget. We do tiers [for compensation] but it’s still painful when you do a tier because they want to get you later with that lawyer. The night before you shoot.”
Seated next to Little Canfield was collaborator Josh Einsohn, who worked with her on both “Doctor Odyssey,” a fizzy medical procedural set on a cruise ship, and “Paradise,” an American political thriller starring Sterling K. Brown. The world of casting can be surprisingly small (all six panelists knew each other before the event), but Canfield and Einsohn forged a special bond working together on “This Is Us.” Teaming up with creator Dan Fogelman again on “Paradise,” they said, felt like a family reunion.
“It was very familiar and comfortable, and we know their taste and they know ours,” said Einsohn, who got his start on “The West Wing.” “I still remember the Zoom we were on with Dan when he said, ‘I think it’s Julianne Nicholson.’” Einsohn was excited to fill a key role and remembers turning to Little Canfield during the video call and saying, “Go fucking get her.”
“You shouldn’t say that to your boss probably, but that’s what came out of my mouth,” Einsohn said, laughing. “We’re excited to get to go after people like that.” A self-proclaimed “‘Charlie’s Angels’ gay,” the casting director also shared a story about chatting with his lifelong hero Jaclyn Smith on the phone when offering her a part on “Doctor Odyssey.”
“We’ve had a good year. These have been really fun projects to work on, very different,” he said. “‘Doctor Odyssey’ is the guest of the week, and ‘Paradise’ is really world building.”
Asked how the process of auditioning for those two shows might be different for actors, Little Canfield said they should largely prepare the same way — finding the character and making smart choices in the scene. But she also noted that on a highly secretive show like “Paradise,” casting directors can only share so much. That’s where the actor’s craft can really come into play.
“You really have to take leaps of faith,” said Little Canfield. “You will not be given any material that tells you very much about the world you’re creating, so you cannot prepare for that. Instead, you have to just look at the circumstance, the characters [in the scene], who are you talking to, [their] relationships, and what information we’ve given you. Use that and your imagination.”
“I don’t know if it’s nerves or what, but a lot of actors blow past some really important context clues,” agreed Einsohn. “It’s right there on the page for you.”
Watch the full video from the Disney Casting Panel at IndieWire’s Pass the Remote series on April 1 at Vidiots in Los Angeles above. Register here to attend the Disney Composers Panel on April 15.
