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Now I feel like the conversation around whether or not celebrity casting, star casting, whatever you want to call it, is destroying theatre in the West End or on Broadway is one that I have been circling around for some time now without explicitly creating space for. But within the last week, the Stage newspaper here in the UK has run two entirely opposing think pieces about whether or not this is happening. And in the last couple of hours I've had two glasses of wine, so why the heck not? Let's talk about celebrity casting in theatre. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening to this on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. Today we are going to be talking about one of the favorite topics of conversation for theater fans on the Internet. No, we're not talking about bootlegs. We did that not too long ago. No, we're not talking about ticket prices, although before too long we will again, no. Today we are talking, as we so often do, about stunt casting and not just whether or not it impacts certain shows and audience members, whether it is actually having an industry wide impact, with my question for you to answer in today's comments being do you think the casting of more celebrities on stage is ultimately wounding the theatre industry? And the reason I asked that question today is not just because of the two different opinion pieces recently shared in the Stage newspaper, one of which, the first of which originally asserted that celebrity casting was killing the theater and the second of which took objection to that position and suggested that no, of course it isn't. But it's also because it's quite a timely conversation to have both here in the West End where many new openings are attached to celebrity casting at the helm, not just in commercial theaters, but more and more so it seems, in smaller off West End, more traditionally artistically driven spaces like the Bridge Theater, like the Almeida, and certainly more and more so on Broadway. We've recently had a conversation about what's happening economically with the Broadway climate and how, you know, success is skewing towards star driven tickets and star driven ticket prices with fewer and fewer big new musicals recouping, but the most successful shows becoming short limited run star led plays starring. Whether it's, you know, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter or Jake Gyllenhaal and Denzel Washington, or the various stars of succession or George Clooney, all of those. And much gets said anecdotally about stunt casting, celebrity casting, star casting, whatever you want to call it. But today we're really going to dig into that and consider whether or not we think it is having a wider impact. As always, I will be sharing my thoughts about this, but I would love to know what yours are as well. Please feel free to weigh in in the comments section down below and if you would like to hear what I have to say about other theatrical issues and conversations, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel or follow me on podcast platforms. But for now let's talk about celebrity casting and whether I think it is killing theatre or not. So we are going to frame this around these two pieces that have been published in in the Stage newspaper. These are opinion pieces and the first came out of the annual Spotlight Conference which is all about casting and which I was actually invited to recently. I didn't get the chance to go but I was very intrigued and so I'm glad that this has emerged from that. If Only to give us, I think, a really interesting insight into the kind of conversations that were happening there. So this was published on October 22, 2025 in a piece written by Katie Chambers, but largely quoting Nadine Rennie, who is the co chair of the Casting Directors Guild, who spoke at the Spotlight conference on October 21st and said something to the effect of celebrity casting is killing theater. Now when we say celebrity casting, I think a disclaimer is important here because the meaning of this is getting increasingly warped. And I've seen people, and I said this recently in another video talking about some UK tour casting with Amber Davis in Legally Blonde and Carrie Hope Fletcher in Waitress. I've seen people calling that stunt casting. And to my mind if they are famous for doing things theatre or musical theatre, and that's what they continue to do, then I don't think that's stunt casting. And so when we talk about celebrity casting, I think it has more to do with bringing people onto the stage from outside of the traditional theatrical sphere. Those who do not have experience on stage, those who do not have a background on stage because they are household names that would be recognized throughout the UK or throughout the US and everyone has a different interpretation as to what that means. I argue with friends and I argue a lot with my stagey fiance Erin James about what constitutes a household name. Because if you can recognize their face from TV and you can't remember what their name is, that is not a household name. The name has to actually mean something. Nadine has said that casting household names in shows is killing the industry and mid scale theaters will be the first to go. She compares the proliferation of celebrity names on stage to feeding a child too much sugar and suggesting theatre goers are increasingly unwilling to take a chance on unknown work. And before we carry on with some more of her thoughts, it sounds initially like what she's suggesting here in is that it's a balance that has maybe begun to tilt in the wrong direction, that there is now just too much celebrity casting. It's always been a reality in certain corners of the industry. Certain productions, plays like 222 A Ghost Story have often indulged in the world of stunt casting. But I wouldn't disagree with the notion that it is now becoming more and more widespread. And it does seem that almost every show now needs to have some sort of a recognizable pseudo celebrity name. But we'll carry on and hear what else she has to say. She said, I personally think it's killing audiences intellects. Now that's controversial. She said, adding, I hear audience members say all the time, I don't know anybody who's in this, or they're not excited about a new play by an emerging writer. I also don't know, in terms of overhearing audience conversations, whether there's an inherent negative connotation to saying, I don't know anybody who's in this. I don't know that it necessarily suggests a lack of quality. It depends on the backgrounds of those audience members and what their expectations are. If they're people, people who go and see an awful lot of theatre, that it may speak to a cast of largely debuting, emerging earlier career talents or people who are less frequently cast on stage. I have one friend, interestingly enough, who sees so much theatre and sees almost exclusively theatre that when a big star name is in a show, that's often the one person who he does not know on stage and has no idea who they are, when you know the rest of the audience might have come just to see them and. And he couldn't tell you. And in terms of the comment around audiences not getting excited about plays by emerging writers, this I think is just a reality about the way that we identify writers and the way that we think of their work. And there are certain individuals who have become successful enough as writers or as creatives, those people who we don't see on stage, that people get excited about their work. And people, certainly avid theatre fans here in the uk, get excited about new productions directed by Rebecca Frecknell, who of course there is buzz about new productions directed by Jamie Lloyd. There are several other directors who have been working for years and years and decades who also carry a similar sort of buzz and a mark of quality. And for writers, I think people still get excited about new James Graham plays, but it is harder and I think where mainstream audiences are concerned, outside of, I guess, the world of fiction, I don't think there is that much of a connection with writers. If you were to ask about like the most compelling, the best written, BAFTA award winning drama series on TV here in the uk, it's often called, or at least in my experience you would often hear it called, like, oh, the new Sheridan Smith thing, the new Sarah Lancashire thing, the new David Tennant thing. It's not referred to by its writers in that world. I don't think a lot of films are either. Perhaps they were in years past when there was some more iconic and well known film writers when people would talk about like the Nora Ephrons, but I don't know, I don't know, if we have that as much in media and entertainment in general these days, and when it comes to new writing, I think we're really bad at that. Similarly, in the theater, you know, we can talk about the Chekhovs and the Shakespeares and the Ibsens, but I don't think we're good at profiling new writers regardless. And it's also, I think, something that feels quite connected to the spoken word rather than the sung word. This is another tangent we could go on, but we are so much better identifying musical theatre composers and lyricists than we are book writers. And we categorize those shows by their composers and not by the entire collaborative writing team. We call, and I'm guilty of this as well, we call into the Woods a Sondheim show rather than Sondheim and James Lapine. More words here from Nadine, who is a casting director currently working with the Gate Theatre, who expressed great alarm about the impact of the trend on mid scale venues. She said, I worry that it's killing the industry in the middle section. This because due to a lack of stars on stage in those smaller theaters, they were suffering from poor ticket sales, despite being places where household names of the future were cutting their teeth. She added, I know we're all trying to do our best to keep it going and do our best work and keep our integrity and our principles, but it is dying. And that's the extent of the quote that we have from Nadine Rennie here. And it's an equally interesting and troubling proposition because although I think the situation isn't quite as drastic as it is or on Broadway, the way the theatrical climate works in the UK is inherently quite different because our regional venues are because our country is so much smaller, less far flung from London. And so the impact of what's happening in the West End trickles down a lot faster. And it does impact regional venues. If there is almost exclusively celebrity casting throughout the shows in the West End in London and I I think it is entirely likely that a lot of other smaller, mid scale, smaller theaters are going to struggle in the face of that when they can't bring in that kind of celebrity casting either because of celebrity availability or because of budget and resources. And I wonder if some of this is also a new reality of the industry beyond and after the pandemic, which I think this piece is going to go on to talk about a little bit more with theaters having to find new compelling ways to incentivize audiences to come into the space to get excited about new Productions, you know, there are a great many theaters, there are only so many audience members to go around. And when we talk about celebrity casting more and more, it's not just the more blatant examples that you might be thinking of, but it's also places like the Donmar Warehouse and like the Almeida and like the national and like the rsc. Even a lot of these season launches recently have hung several productions on stars who may have worked on stage but are also very well known for TV and film appearances. Which is sort of one of the best examples of celebrity casting where someone has the chops, but through the wider body of work that they've done has also become a well known household name. TV series like Game of Thrones or the Crown are great for that because they often take stage talent or certainly stage ready talent, and they put them in, in these very theatrical types of TV shows and dramas and they then release them after becoming very popular and famous and then they are free once more to return to projects on stage. And so like Rose Leslie goes back to the stage, Kit Harington goes back to the stage, all of the Crown go back to the stage. But they have with that sort of become stars nonetheless. And it does feel then harder to be a smaller or a mid scale venue, especially when, and this is something else that you notice when you pay attention to British regional theatres. A lot of them do tend to license and produce many of the same plays. Gosh, if we have another regional production of Noel Coward's Private Lives, I swear to goodness it's a funny play, it's a witty play, it's popular with audiences, but it's done everywhere. It's done absolutely everywhere. That's before we start the conversation about doing the same Seven Shakespeares over and over and over. And it's difficult to be the Macbeth or the Private Lives that doesn't have star casting. When the one up the road six months ago did we have other professionals quoted in this piece as well? The next one is the National Theatres director of casting, Alastair Kumar, who labeled star casting the one way that theaters can guarantee a really hot sale upfront after Covid transformed ticket buying habits. Now what he means by this is that audiences are with less frequency booking tickets in advance. And I think this was just a big shift in the way that people manage their entire lives and the way that people plan ongoingly as a result of COVID maybe people are also going out a little bit less. Maybe there's more of a timidity around that. Either a conscious or an unconscious one. But it has been made very clear that people are not booking as far in advance for the theater as they used to. And to my mind, and obviously he has more data on this than I do, I would agree that the thing that gets people to actually engage with a show that is upcoming and book a little further in advance is a revelation of star casting, of celebrity casting. Because that would make me think, oh, this is going to be popular, this is going to sell. And if I want to see this before it sells out entirely, I am going to need to book a ticket. Otherwise, if I think there's going to be tickets available near the time I, I will still plan to go. But there is no impetus for me to book in advance. The only thing that is motivating me to do that is the fear of it selling out. And certainly there were a lot of tickets available for something like Jamie Lloyd Zavita at the London Palladium until the moment that they announced Rachel Zegler. And then the tide started to shift a little bit even more. So once it was opening and she was singing from the balcony and it was getting all of the great buzz and the word of mouth, then the tickets really started to move, then the dynamic pricing started to start soar into the sky like a hot air balloon. But what Mr. Kuma goes on to say here is people do not book in advance in the way that they used to. The national would put a new season on sale and we could rely on a core audience to book in advance for four, maybe five productions. We now know it's one or two. And celebrity casting is the biggest driver now for audiences. It's as simple as that. And in terms of how this is affecting those smaller mid scale venues, he continued by saying, it's putting a very huge pressure on the industry. Now all of us are chasing the same very, very small group of people. I know that Sheridan Smith's telephone must be ringing off the because she remains one of the individuals. You know, the Sheridan Smiths of this world, the Imelda Stauntons of this world, who continue to work prolifically on stage and command a lot of interest in ticket sales. The actual number of stars who can reliably attract an audience before the curtain goes up, Kuma claimed, is smaller than a lot of venues think. Producers quite often think it's a bigger group. You have this weird compromise where the casting isn't really satisfactory in terms of what the show really needs and is also not satisfactory in terms of the box office. And I would be A little more crass to cite a bunch of examples now, but I can think of some productions recently that have had to bring in sort of a couple of mid tier celebrities to try and garner some interest in those shows. And it still hasn't necessarily worked, I often say of this type of casting as well. It has to align with an individual's brand. And there are certain people who, you know, audiences might prefer to see in a musical than to see in a play. And so they sell better when they're doing musical theatre than when they're doing comedic or a dramatic play. Likewise, the tone of the play matters for certain people as well. James Corden doing a dramatic role at the Old Vic, which I thought he was entirely decent in, wasn't necessarily the hottest ticket in the world. But if he was to come back in a more one man, two governors adjacent comedy, I dare say that would sell a lot better in London because it aligns with his personal brand. The shows that Sheridan Smith sells out in versus the ones that she doesn't. Same for Damon. Melda Staunton. Also interesting to take a look at there carrying on. Indu Rubasingham's first season at the helm of the National Theatre boasts major figures including Paul Mescal and Nicola Coughlan. But Kuma also pointed to less starry productions such as the current ensemble led Bacchae. And he said, I'm not making this up. At the National Theatre, our conversations start about the work, what the play needs, what the demands of the space are, what the director has in mind and what the writer has envisaged. On which point he went on to say that although celebrity casting enabled theatres to funnel cash towards supporting new work, which is an important reality of the balance in the industry, that there are more commercial ventures and more artistically driven ones. And it's an important balance of those two ideas. And sometimes, you know, the cash cow pays for the. The artistic integrity horse, I guess. He said there was a danger that the industry could become less adventurous with writing and casting in the future. But unlike Rennie, he added, I don't think we're there yet. What I do have concerns about is that new writing is going to become more neglected altogether in favor of revivals and to jump the Atlantic for a brief moment and go and talk about Broadway. We are seeing comparatively fewer new plays featuring starry performers. And I am not counting that adaptation of the Picture of Dorian Gray by Kip Williams starring Sarah Snook as a new play. She was basically reading the book on stage that was A revival, to my mind, certainly all of the Shakespearean stuff, revivals. Glengarry Glen Ross was a revival. A lot of the plays coming in this season, you're waiting for Godos. A lot of the other stuff that has recently been announced or that is scheduled to be opening over the next few months, a lot of revival productions. That tends to be where you find the celebrity casting. George Clooney was an outlier example, co adapting a film that he had been attached to previously as a piece of new writing for the stage. But for the most part, that we're seeing celebrities in revivals of older plays. And so that, I think, does put a lot of pressure on new writing to try and sell nearly as well, which it's not going to be able to do, which is why I celebrate the actors who do throw their weight behind new writing and new playwrights. I think that's a really important use of anyone's celebrity and platform and something they can absolutely choose to do. Now, there is one final quote here, and that is from another casting director, Annalee Powell, who took aim at what she claimed was a widespread assumption that big name casting comes at the expense of theatrical talent. She said, I think that a lot of people think a star is somebody that will put bums on seats, but doesn't necessarily have the chops or the experience to be on the stage. And I so wish throughout this article, because I don't even know who we're really talking about here, whether we're talking about the kind of names I've already suggested, or whether we're talking about slightly less theatrically experienced performers, maybe those who started in theatre and then stepped away for a long time to go and do more screen work and then return less frequently. I don't know. I think it's very difficult to have these kinds of conversations if we're going to be so deliberately vague about the types of actors and celebrities that we are invoking here. She went on to say, it's quite hard to go to a regional theater and find a star casting where they haven't had some sort of legitimate stage experience. Of course, that does happen in certain things, but that becomes a conversation. It does the job of. Of starting the conversation. The flip side of it is the pressure that is on us and producers and regional houses to get Bryan Cranston to come to Birmingham for four weeks on £650 per week. And once you start to then bring a conversation about finances and salaries into it, then you start to see some of the challenges faced by those smaller regional producing houses. And I remember Imelda Staunton actually said at the press launch for hello Dolly that those were the theaters she was the most concerned about, that London had done a great job of, you know, coming back since the closures in 2020 and that more support needed to be given to regional theaters. And just like I was saying, more celebrities should be throwing their weight behind new plays on Broadway. Perhaps it's up to stars and celebrity names to do more regional theatre here in the uk. But I absolutely understand and agree with a lot of the points made in that piece and I think it does reflect a lot of very real challenges being experienced in the industry. However, do you know who doesn't necessarily agree is Lynn Gardner, who shared an opinion piece shortly afterwards, five days later in fact, in the same newspaper.