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This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive for more. Capella University's flexpath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at Capella. Edu. When you're deciding whether to see a movie, one of the questions you might ask is pretty simple. Who's in it? That's because we all know that one of the things that separates a good movie from a great movie or even a good movie from a bad movie movie is casting.
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This year, for the first time, there's an Oscar being awarded for casting. That got us thinking. What makes a great cast anyway? How can talent, skill, charisma, chemistry and everything else an actor brings to the table make a movie memorable? I'm Stephen Thompson.
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And I'm Linda Holmes. Today we're talking about what makes a great cast on pop culture. Happy hour from npr. This message comes from BetterHelp. This international women's Day. Let's celebrate the leaders, the caregivers, the hype, friends with all they handle. Women need to care for themselves and therapy's a great way to do that. Visit betterhelp.com NPR joining us today are our co hosts, Glenn Weldon. Hello, Glenn.
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God, I hope I get it. How many people does he need?
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Oh, Glenn. And Aisha Harris. Hello, Aisha.
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D
Ready for my close up, Linda?
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A
Mm, mm, mm. So as we mentioned up top, there is finally a casting Oscar this year. It is about time. There have been casting Emmys for quite a while, so the Oscars are playing catch up, if you haven't seen the list. The nominated casting directors are Nina Gold for Hamnet, Jennifer Venditti for Marty Supreme, Cassandra Kulakundis for One Battle After Another, Gabrielle Dominguez for the Secret Agent, and Francine Masler for Sinners. And maybe we will touch on some of those. But what we're really talking about is casting in general and what makes a great cast work. It's a very specific skill, finding talent, not just finding the person who's gonna be great, but finding the person who matches what the director wants. So, Stephen, I'm gonna start with you. What do you think of when you think about a great cast?
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Well, I think the key to a great cast is balance, a mix of known quantities and discoveries, powerful lead performances, memorable faces on the margins, and hopeful discoveries along the way. I think when we talk about big name stars in movies, the casting part of the equation often for me boils down to whether they're the right big name for the stars, not Just whether they're bankable, but whether they're bringing exactly the right energy to go with the film in question. If it's one of those movies where, like, everybody is somebody, are all those famous faces a distraction? Are they detracting instead of adding? And ultimately, as I kind of said up front, I want a sense of discovery. I want at some point to be like, who is that? Or even better, in a way, a sense of rediscovery. Like, I haven't seen that person in forever. You thought of somebody I loved and had forgotten about. I love a comeback. And some of my favorite casting involves kind of bringing back somebody I miss. And ideally, you want even the bit players to bring a lot of presence. And if you look at the films that are nominated for best casting this year, that's one thing I think that really jumps out, is you'll just see these faces and be like, ooh, who's that guy? Who's she? So for me, it's like anything. It's a mix of many, many, many different factors, all of which have to work in concert.
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A
Yeah, that makes sense to me. That all makes sense to me. All right, Aisha, how about you? Great cast. Where does your mind go?
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D
Well, I mean, I think I echo so much of what Stephen said. And also, you know, if you've listened to the show, you know that sometimes we love a good taxonomy. And while trying to wrap my head around this, I did kind of come up with my own sort of categorizations for the things that I look for and things that apply. And I think a lot of these overlap in many ways. But, you know, I think of first, like, the raw cast, the ones where you have people who have no sort of experience whatsoever acting, and you have to, like, go off of vibes, go off of how they work with the material. You have no pre existing knowledge of how they might be in front of a camera. So I think of something like, of course, the classic Bicycle Thieves, the Vittorio De Sica film, or Tangerine from Sean Baker. And then, like, then there are the films that are more I. They are good at showcasing a community, like an insular group of people. And every single person feels real, has their own distinct character, but they mesh well together. So something like Goodfellas or Do the Right Thing. And then, like, the last one, I'll point out before we go deeper, is like chemistry. And when I say chemistry, I mean, like, these people, they play well together, whether romantically or. There's nothing I hate more than a movie where you don't believe that these people would actually be friends.
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C
True.
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D
So, like, when a movie does a really good job of casting people who seem believable as a group of friends or best friends. So I think of something like one of them days, Superbad, Thelma and Louise. Like, those are the things that I really look for when I'm thinking about great casts. And yeah, it's all about, like, gelling and believability, I think.
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A
Yeah, that makes sense to me too. All right, Glenn. I don't know. Aisha jumped in with a taxonomy. I feel like maybe she preempted you. What have you got, man?
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C
I tried. I really tried. Cause I am me. I tried to come up with a taxonomy because, you know, for somebody who takes comfort in objective truths and taxonomies and an overall lack of. I mean, casting is squishy. It's chemistry, it's vibes. Right. I guess what I'm looking for is the feeling that you can't imagine that particular role being played by anyone else. That there's something definitive. You know, we talk about owning a role. That's what we're talking about. Something unique. They make choices that no other actor would think to make. Not that they couldn't. Because it's not really about skill set. I don't really believe that casting is about, like the actor skill. I think it's about their fit, you know, and if they're making those choices not in the interest of showiness, but in the interest of nailing down the specifics of that character, hitting notes that other actors wouldn't. I think about the 1950 film All About Eve because I'm a middle aged, very basic gay man that stars Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Marilyn Monroe. And I was gonna say it's like a Jenga tower. You pull any piece away, the whole thing collapses. But that's famously not how Jenga works.
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You have failed at Jenga, if that's
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how I have failed at Jenga. So it's like a room with like five load bearing walls, right? And the energy that Anne Baxter gives in that thing is the ingenue is feeding the energy that Bette Davis is as the, you know, actress of a certain age and makes her Bette Davis year, right? And then the specific dynamic between the two of them, you know, George Sanders, who's like this critic who like, is a snide. And if you're me, you grow up wanting to be George Sanders, wanting to be Edison DeWitt, he is reacting to that specific dynamic. I think it's about specificity.
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A
Yeah. I mean, the thing that I love about this, and I agree with what all of you have already said, but the thing I love about this is that I find casting such a fascinating field because I don't really understand the skill of it. And that's actually true with a lot of things. I have to listen to people talk about how they do it in order to really understand how it's done. You talked about fit, Glenn, and I think it's not just fit in the sense that the person fits the part. It's also that what the casting director is doing a lot of the time is funneling people to the director. So it's to balance, like, what you. Who you, as the casting director, think would be great, but also who does the director want and what is the director's vision? And there are interesting stories that kind of casting directors, they can't, like, boss around the director, but they can kind of continue to nudge and nudge and try to get the person there. In sort of preparation for this conversation, as well as the conversation that Glenn and I had on All Things Considered, I watched a couple of interviews with casting directors, one of whom is this woman named Marcia Ross who has a YouTube video about what really goes into casting. Now, she's the woman who, among other things, cast Both clueless and 10 things I hate about yout Classic. And she brings in for both of those movies these giant binders. And I have no idea whether casting directors would still have these giant paper binders or not, but she has these giant paper binders, and she goes through. And she actually lets you sort of sit on notes that she made at the time, or at least the notes that the casting people made at the time. So it'll be like Matt Damon they were interested in for Josh in Clueless. But her conversations about, like, how they cast and spying on these little lists, it was fascinating to me because that whole process, I think, is so interesting, because some of these folks. And this is why I inevitably bring up my favorite casting director to know as a fan girl. Who is Alison Jones?
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Oh, gosh, absolutely.
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A woman who cast. We've been talking mostly about film, but she cast a lot of the kind of universe of the Office and Parks and Rec and the Good Place, a bunch of the Paul Feig stuff, Spy and the Heat and Bridesmaids. I think Spy's a brilliantly cast movie, but also like a bunch of Judd Apatow stuff, Freaks and Geeks, which is also Paul Feig adjacent.
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One of the Most famously well cast TV shows in history.
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Yeah, absolutely. Superbad, Knocked up, the 40 Year Old Virgin, Borat, which I didn't know. And this is my favorite list is kind of these. She also casts Barbie and Booksmart and 8th grade and lady Bird and last year Weapons. You know, it has a great cast.
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Oh, that is a really well cast movie.
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And so when you look at that, it's like, how influential is somebody like that who has credits? And like, I didn't even mention, like, work on Arrested Development, Veep, Curb youb Enthusiasm, Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Like, imagine anybody who has significant creative credits in all of those different things. That's astonishing to me. I love thinking about how influential these folks are. And the fact that they're not super famous is kind of weird.
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D
Yeah, yeah.
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She's basically at the top of a pyramid scheme of fame because you think about how many shows were influenced by those shows. How many shows were cast because those people were on the shows that she cast. I mean, that's seriously one of the most influential people in Hollywood.
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Yeah.
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And the relationship between casting directors and the director. I mean, it's a relationship and you have to have incredible clear communication. But at the end of the day, the casting director casts the net. The director cooks the fish.
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Good, good, good. I like it.
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You also have to deal with all the different directors that you're dealing with, all their different bags of bs because some directors are gonna be wanting to be in on the conversation from the jump. Some kind of parachute in at the end. I just finished this book about Twin Peaks called A Place Both Wonderful and Strange. And David Lynch's longtime casting director, Joanna Ray, said she had her eyes on these two actors for like the te in the show, James Marshall and Sherilyn Fenn, who played James and Audrey. She had her eye on these two for years and years and years. But the first time she called them in, they were terrible. In her words, they were hopeless. But she kept calling them back because she saw something in them. A phrase that comes up in casting a bunch and a bunch, and then finally they were ready. And then for Twin the Return, which featured a lot of new characters which needed a lot of new actors. Lynch didn't want to meet any of the actors, so he wanted her to talk to them on tape and they'd look at the tapes. And she said that when she's casting, she never really wants to have actors read lines, which is a buck wild thing for a casting director to say. But she said she doesn't trust it because they're just gonna give me the monologue. They've done it a thousand times. So what she did for that particular project was she sat them down and she said, talk to me about something in your life that's interesting. That's not the industry. And look, I know a lot of actors. I've dated some actors, and I know that many of them would be like, oh, I get to talk about me. I'm on it. But I also know that there'd be some who would hate that because they go into acting not to hide, but they go into acting to be somebody else. So the idea that that's what that crucial decision can be made of. But that's the thing. Different casting directors have different methods. Different directors have different methods.
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D
I mean, I think part of the reason why it's taken so long for there even to be a category for this is because, like, for all of that. And yes, I think the fish and the cooking. That's great metaphor, Glenn, but. But there's still so much variability in terms of what happens. And if you think about all the profiles you read of how movies were made and, like, the 20th anniversary of, like, whatever movie, and then it's like we're talking about how we cast. How often is the casting director actually ever mentioned? Like, it's often alighted. It's often sort of just, like, implied, but not explicitly stated. Like, it's almost always like, well, the director liked this person or whatever. And that's partially by design. I want to recommend the documentary Casting by, which came out in 2012. It profiles a few different casting directors, but the one it's mainly focused on is Marion Doherty, who casts Midnight Cowboy, Lethal Weapon, Grease. But it features an interview with Taylor Hackford, who is very much like, directors are the ones who actually deserve to be called directors. Like, it should not be casting directors, and they don't actually do that. And it's just like, oh, my goodness, this is what they're up to. And I think because of both, like, the variability, all the different ways that people do get cast, I don't think it's just casting directors directly, but that's the case with all movies. Right. It's like every part is variable. And the director, yes, he's there, the director, whoever's the director, but there's all these other moving parts. Yeah, it's nice that we're finally kind of trying to drill down on this, but it still feels very nebulous in
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a way, and I think that's a good time to kind of bring up a couple of the reservations that I have about having an Oscar for casting, which I'm totally in favor of. But my fear is one that it's gonna turn into a proxy for best picture, that people are just gonna check the box of the movie they like best or the acting they like best and not necessarily think about the craft of casting. But I also wonder about the casting Oscar as essentially standing in for kind of that old Roger Ebert line about how best actor is like most acting is like most casting. Looking at the field of nominated casting this year, one of those nominated films is Marty Supreme. And if you look at the cast of Marty supreme, it is full of kind of flashy stunt casting. It's a lot of like, here's Tyler, the creator. Here's Penn Jillette. Here's, you know, here are several basketball players.
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Shark Tank guy.
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Here's Kevin o' Leary from Shark Tank. They found a way to really play against type and have him play a huge jerk.
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Really stretching his abilities there.
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I do think it's a very well cast movie and it has a lot of kind of interesting faces popping up all the time. But that is a very flashily cast movie compared to movies where the casting may be perfect but so subtle that people don't notice it.
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Yeah.
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Well. And I will say that the nominees at least, and that this gives me some comfort. Right. The nominees were chosen by the casting director's branch.
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Right.
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So these nominees were chosen by people who do know and care what good casting is. But, I mean, I agree with you. I think there's some possibility that that will happen, that people will pick the movie they like the best. I think sometimes there's a sense that that happens with certain categories like editing that, like, people don't necessarily have. Not because they're not important, do not misunderstand me. But because not everybody who votes has a clear picture of exactly what that skill is. And I look at those nominees and they are some of the ones I thought were cast really well. Certainly Sinners, I think was. I think Marty Supreme's an interesting case. You're sort of into what the Safdie thing is about casting or you're not. Right. I really liked Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems. Didn't care that much for Kevin o' Leary in this. So I'm like, I think split my Kevins a little bit. Like offbeat casting. Like, I look at this list of nominees and I'm like, yeah, this is a pretty respectable set of nominees. I love that. I mean, listen, Sinners was nominated for everything it was eligible in, I believe. I certainly think it's very much deserving of this. It's probably what I would vote for.
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No. And for a film like Sinners, it fits, right? So part of this is also. And this is also the director who's responsible for, like, controlling the tone and controlling the performances. But Michael B. Jordan gets a chance to do his thing. Delroy Lindo gets a chance to do his thing. But it also also you allow one Mi Masako and Jack o' Connell in smaller parts to make their own unique impressions, I would say. In Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights, Alison Oliver as Isabella. She comes in with this comic performance that doesn't quite steal the film. Comes close, but it doesn't quite steal the film. It's just a different energy. Everybody understands the assignment. They bring their own stuff to the table. They bring different things, but it feels like all of a piece. But sometimes there is such a thing as scene stealing, right? So Andrew Scott as Moriarty in Sherlock was a revelation, right? And you were like, oh, Moriarty's great. Who's this guy? Who is Andrew Scott? And you know, you notice Philip Seymour Hoffman in the talented Mr. Ripley. I noticed Steven Stucker as Johnny in Airplane, because you can't not. You notice Julianne Moore in Vanya on 42nd Street, Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona. Here's a guy who makes those big choices, always owns the part. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And that's, you know, you cast Nicholas Coach because you want to roll those dice.
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D
Well, one of the examples that I kind of wanted to bring forth is jumping off of that, which is one of my taxonomy tiers is Community. And for me, one of the movies that does that so great is Devil in a Blue Dress, the Carl Franklin film that's the adaptation of Walter Mosley's novel. And you have Denzel Peak, Denzel Washington, and then you have all of these other characters and you have Jennifer Beals playing this. You know this well, okay, if you haven't seen the movie, see it. It's been 30 plus years, but, like, it's revealed that she is a woman who is passing for white, but she's actually biracial. And to cast Jennifer Beals, who is probably in her obituary, is gonna be best known for Flash Dance, let's be real. But like, she is a black biracial woman. Just the act of casting her in that and sort of her being able to access that kind of character and what that might mean in the 1940s. And then you have, of course, Don Cheadle as Mouse. And Don Cheadle is the. He comes in. He's not in all that much of the movie. I rewatched it recently and I forgot, like. Oh, he doesn't come in until, like, very much. Well into this movie. He comes in, he does his thing and he leaves. And he practically steals that movie from Denzel Washington. But it's those little things where you have all these different people. And Lisa, Nicole Carson as Coretta.
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A
Oh, I love her.
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All these different characters who feel so full and realized and they may not have that much screen time, but they are there. And when it's all working in concert together, I think it's just such a lovely thing. And the casting director on Devil in the Blue Dress was Victoria Thomas, a black woman who also did Django Unchained. She's done the Last of Us, Edward Scissorhand. Like, it's one of those things where you don't necessarily have a genre. You do everything, which I think is a little bit different from other fields in this. Like, you don't specialize. You can do everything and you have to do everything.
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And it feels like it's a field that is more dependent on memory than almost any other. And like remembering ineffable qualities about somebody you met in passing in a formal kind of cattle call setting. And it's like, oh, three years ago I saw somebody who had a soulful quality that wasn't quite right for the character, you know, and then all of a sudden, the whole course of film and TV history changes. People get discovered that way all the time. And it really is a remarkable field that has such extraordinary outsize impact.
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A
Yeah. And I do want to mention one other thing which tracks both with some of the conversation that we've had and with the nominees this year for the Oscar, which is that this is a trade in which a lot of the really well established people are women. And we talked about Allison Jones, we talked about Marcia Ross, and there are these two women who were business partners named Jane Jenkins and Janet Hershensen, who cast most of the Rob Reiner, Ron Howard, Chris Columbus movies of the 80s and the 90s. So that's the people who, you know, they were involved in the original, like the beginning of the Harry Potter movies, Home Alone, A Few Good Men Stand By Me. Like, a lot of the giants in this particular field are women. I saw kind of a, I think a very informal estimate of like 70, 75%, something like that. I don't want to speculate about why because that gets very gender essentialist and weird. But I do think it's interesting. And when you talk about how it's not necessarily something that is recognized and talked about all the time, I gotta think it's at least, like, maybe somewhat relevant that a lot of them are women.
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Yeah. If there were way more men doing this, they would have had an award at least 40 years ago. Let's be real.
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Well, we want to know what you think makes a good cast. Find us@facebook.com PCHH that brings us to the end of our show. Clen Weldon, Aisha Harris, Stephen Thompson, thank you so much for being here. If I were casting a show to do for 16 years, these are the people I would cast to do.
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It's essentially what we did.
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C
Thank you. It is.
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A
Thank you.
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C
Thank you.
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This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katsif and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello. Come in. Of course provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from npr. I'm Linda Holmes and we will see you all next time.
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biggest story keeps getting bigger.
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This week on up first, we're tracking the escalating war in Iran, rising oil prices, and a global economy on edge as the conflict spills beyond Iran. Our host, Leila Fadel, is on the ground in Iraq. Listen each morning for three stories you need to start your day on up
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first on the NPR app or wherever
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you get your podcasts.