Casting Thirtysomething & Creating Stars | Marcia Ross, Part 1 - 80s TV Ladies

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Weirdy, weird medium Eighties So pretty Babies through the City Dreamed,
the money Man World.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello, dear listeners, Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies. We look
back at female driven television shows from the nineteen eighties
and celebrate the people who made them. Here are your hosts,
Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert had them.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
When Susan and I started this podcast, we thought it
would be mostly us talking about the television shows we
loved and remembered, with a few occasional guests. But we
quickly realized that all these people who were involved in
eighties television and film have incredible stories to tell, and
we wanted to celebrate these talented women and men who

(00:58):
made television in the nineteen eighties, many of whom have
continued to create amazing work beyond the eighties. Talking with
folks behind the scenes has been invaluable in learning about
those jobs, but also enables us to examine what has
changed since the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 4 (01:15):
So yet another serendipitous Eighties TV Ladies story is what
brought us our next guest. I'm a member of a
lap Alliance of Los Angeles playwrights and met a great
playwright and producer Jeff Kaufman when we exchanged some emails
and Jeff was like, hey, you know my wife worked
for Disney for many years? Did you know her? Know her?

(01:35):
Turns out, though I had never met her, I knew
of her because she was the celebrated and brilliant head
of casting for Disney Films while I was there, Miss
Marcia Ross.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
I'm so excited to have our first casting director on
our show. Marcia Ross started in New York Theater, then
worked with Judith Halstra, ultimately joining her to become half
of Halls Ross Casting. Marcia Ross was VP of Casting
for Warner Brothers Television for five years and the EVP

(02:04):
for casting at Walt Disney Motion Pictures for sixteen years.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
Just a few of the films she cast includes Streets
of Fire, Clueless, The Princess Diaries, Ten Things I Hate
About You, and she is credited with introducing new talent
such as Heath Ledger, Anne Hathaway, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd,
Amy Poehler, Jennifer Gardner. The list goes on.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
We are so thrilled to welcome her to EIGHTYESTV Ladies,
and it's so special to have her here in person
in our little studio.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Hello, miss Marsha Ross. Hello, very nice to have you
here today.

Speaker 5 (02:39):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
We are so excited to speak with you. And it
was so interesting to discover that we were both at
Disney at the same time. But I don't think we've
ever met.

Speaker 5 (02:49):
No, I mean, I came to Disney.

Speaker 6 (02:51):
I started in January of nineteen ninety five, and I
was there through about February March twenty eleven.

Speaker 4 (02:58):
So you were there longer than I was, But I
was there your entire ten probably I knew your name.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
Yeah. Well.

Speaker 6 (03:05):
I ran the casting the future film casting department, and
when I was hired, initially I was doing you know,
Disney and then touchdown and then they and there was
separate Hollywood Pictures. By the time I left, it was
all one. Yeah, so we were over it. I was
the first tenant in the Frank you Wells building, okay,
all right, yes, because Royal Disney was right next door,
and then there was a commissary on the other side.

Speaker 5 (03:27):
Yeah, that's Royal Disney.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, all right, Well that's where I was, and I
were over the ABC Riverside building because I started working
at ABC and end of two thousand, I was assistant
to Alex Walla, who is the president of the network,
and I just retired from Disney about.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
A year and a half ago.

Speaker 5 (03:44):
Were there quite a while.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
I did, because it was my intent when I went
there that this was going to be it, this was
going to be my last job, and I managed to
make it work that way for me.

Speaker 5 (03:52):
So that's great. That's yes, it did work out great. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
Yeah. I I I was in mark so I started
in behind the scenes. I ended up running the digital
marketing department, which was a fun ride, but mostly because
a lot of people got fired.

Speaker 6 (04:10):
Well that's like the thing there. Every time you turn around,
people are getting fired.

Speaker 5 (04:15):
You know.

Speaker 6 (04:15):
When I first met Bob Iger, Bob was actually at ABC,
you know, he just had a production we did thirty something.
I think he was president at that time, right, Yeah. Yeah,
let's start at the beginning.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
How to talk about how you got into casting and
your interest in casting initially.

Speaker 6 (04:31):
So I grew up in New York. I grew up
in Menvern in New York more famously and Done, where
Denzel Washington was born. That's where I'm from, and Menvern
is very close to Manhattan. And my parents took me
to see my first Broadway show when I was eight,
which is Oliver, and then I saw Carol Channing and
Hello Dolly when I was ten, and I was pretty
much from a very young age hooked on theater.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (04:51):
By the time I was in high school, I was
really going to theater all the time. Every Saturday, my
mom would take me to the train, I would go
in by myself. Of course, tickets were so cheap then,
you know, five dollars, you know for real balcony, three
dollars to stand. I mean, you know, I saw everything,
you know, when I would go around Wednesdays, was I
was out of school, or if i'd get you know,
a parent to take me at night, if there was something.

(05:13):
So when I went to college, I ended up being
I was a theater major, but I did not want
to act. I was I'm too practical to be an actor,
and I just didn't feel like, you know, there would
be a place for something like me. And I did
some acting in high school, but that was about it.
And at that time I thought I'd be a stage manager,
and that's what I was doing when I was at
Northwestern in the theater department. But they didn't have a

(05:34):
program in stage managing. So an opportunity came up with
the National Theater Company, which was a theater company by
the Baron fran Weisla, who are now very big Bardway producers,
but in those days they would send out these productions
of children shows. So I went to work for them
when I was like, guess, nineteen or twenty. I was
sort of the assistant. We had the two assistants to

(05:55):
the stage manager. And at the end I got an
equity contract and we spent two months rehearsing in seven
months on the road with the Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
We traveled all over the Eastern United States, schools this
and that, and when that was over, I, you know,
I didn't really like all that living out of a suitcase,
which is kind of almost like an actor's life too, really,

(06:16):
and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And
I started working at Circle in the Square in New York.
I worked in this description department, and I didn't really
know anything about casting. I didn't know what that was
at that time. I mean, I knew agents because I
knew actors had agents. And I got a job when
I was twenty two working in a small talent agency

(06:36):
for a man named Monty Silver who had incredible tastes.
It was a small agency, it was a lot of
opportunity for me. And while I worked for Monty, casting
directors called and I started to talk to them on
the phone and learn about what, you know, what was
that relationship. I became a talent agent when I was
twenty three, and I was sending people out on regional

(06:58):
theater and commercial. But I didn't really enjoy it. I
found it very frustrating because I love talent and I
love finding people, and I love being able to help people.
And you know, Agent D had a lot of frustrations
because I was at the mercy of all these casting
directors whether or not they would see this person that
I found. And I went to the theater five nights

(07:18):
a week, so I was always, you know, looking for
new people, and an opportunity came up. I got an
introduction through the late Jeremy Ritzer. Fear and Ritzer were
incredible casting directors, by the way, in the seventies and
eight I mean they cast Bob Fosse, you know, they
you know, talk about eighties casting so much. Incredible work,
someone who was a great mentor to me. Also Shirley

(07:39):
Rich who put Meryl Streep in her first you know
television things. I mean, there were some great casting directors
in New York in those days. And I got my
first job in casting at CBS Television in New York.
I was assistant to the head of casting. What we
did was that we would bring talent into all the
la casting directors that came to New York to find people.

(08:01):
And that was our job, you know, to go out
and see everybody in New York and find people and
bring in the likes of Tom Hanks. I mean, those
were the sort of people we were bringing in then.
This was the late seventies, I guess, nineteen seventy eight,
seventy nine, So we were doing that. And at one
point I was working with the casting director named Judith Holstra,
who I ended up working with for eight years. And

(08:21):
she'd come to New York on a pilot called Oh
Love at First Sight with who was in Philip Levian
and Susan Bigelow. I mean, this is now, you know,
nineteen eighty the start of nineteen eighty I worked on
this pilot. Anyway, at the end of the week of
showing Judith actors and working with her on this because
my boss had had to rush to Los Angeles for

(08:41):
a crisis, so I was just alone with this woman
helping her. I asked her because I thought, you know,
maybe like I needed to go to LA. I'd never
been to Los Angeles, but maybe I needed to go
to LA because there wasn't a lot of opportunity. There
were features in New York, but there wasn't a lot
of television like now. And she actually offered me a job,
and so I I said, well, you know, I can't

(09:02):
leave during pilot season, but I'll come out at the
end I and I did, and I ended up moving
out there to Los Angeles. Jil I third nineteen eighty.
So I was there for the eighties and that, you know,
because that show got picked up. And you know, I
really didn't know a lot of actors. I knew a
lot of actors like theater actors and actors i'd seen

(09:24):
on stage, actors I'd seen on television, but the kind
of day to day actors that you need to know
when you're casting a television series. That's a whole new thing.
And there's not a lot of time to do it,
and she just threw me in. I mean, I have
to say, you know, she's truly my mentor. Everything I
really based. My whole kind of how I ran my
own business and worked as a casting director comes from
the things that I learned, you know, in those days,

(09:46):
the eight years I was with Judith.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
And what were those things.

Speaker 6 (09:49):
Well, particularly how to deal with people, you know, I mean,
Judith had great taste. So I have to say I
was very, very lucky because I worked for several people,
also my Bossbrick Jacobs. When I worked at CBS, I
worked for three people who all had great taste in actors,
who all were very like Mentory. And also we're willing

(10:11):
to give me a lot of opportunity. But in casting,
you know, casting is like a what I call like
a threefold thing. My favorite part, of course is the actors.
It's you know, finding new people. I mean, it's the
most exciting real part of casting is all those new people.
And you know, it's a lot of readings and a
lot of things, seeing things and all that. So you
do that, and then there's the next part, which is
making the deals and dealing with all the business aspects.

Speaker 5 (10:33):
Of it.

Speaker 6 (10:34):
You know, it's great to find an actor, but if
you can't make the deal, that's a problem, and that
could be very hard dealing with a lot of agents
and managers and lawyers. But really, and this is the
thing I think I learned most from her, is, you know,
dealing with all the personalities that make the decision because
you know, you have to get a lot of people
on board to agree. You also have to get people

(10:55):
to see what you think is good because you can
bring in people that they don't get, but you know
they're the right people sometimes. I mean there's countless actors
who can bring in that don't get the part who
go on to other great success. But you know, this
is go working with all the personalities, and I think
that for the best casting directors there is an incredible skill.

(11:16):
So I learned a lot about watching her, how she
really interacted with people, and a lot of stuff. I mean,
in the eighties, that's where I was. I was with
Judith from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty eight, and then
it was sort of time to move on. You know,
I had been offered a job at CBS. To go
back to CBS as a low level executive when I
was twenty seven. But Judith had said, no, I want

(11:36):
you to become my business partner post Ross casting, and
I thought, you know what, I turned the job down
because I thought, you know something. I told it was
Jing Guests, who was head of CBS at the time.
It's head of casting there. So I just said, you know,
I think that it's more important for me to become
a good casting director now. I think I will be
a better executive down the road if I really am
a good casting director. But then there was an opportunity

(11:58):
that opened up at Warners in a The person who
had been head of casting was moving to New York,
and I ended up getting that job, you know, because
I wanted to try that part of casting.

Speaker 5 (12:08):
So I was at Warner Brothers.

Speaker 6 (12:10):
From eighty eight to ninety three and I was running
the television casting department there and I was still always
casting too. I was able to find a way to
balance the job with the guests.

Speaker 4 (12:20):
That's tough being an executive, and yeah, but.

Speaker 6 (12:23):
I wanted to do it because I felt like I
needed to keep my skills up because I think, you know,
when you don't do it for a long time, walking
into a room and having to present to directors and
producers that first time and have a level of confidence about,
you know, my taste. So I always wanted to keep
that muscle going, so I just I did. But you know,

(12:44):
when you're an executive, you know this about working at Disney,
you don't really get a lot of feedback. I mean,
the main feedback is that nobody fires.

Speaker 5 (12:51):
You, correct, I mean that's the feedback.

Speaker 6 (12:55):
You know at Christmas your boss says, Okay, you know
you get you know, you get whatever you get, or
like one of my bosses once said to me, says,
you know, Marshall, I know you would like to have
more contact with me, but you know, just keep doing
what you're doing. I only call people, and I'm not happy.
But when you're in a room with people and you're casting,
you get a lot more feedback because you work with
the director and the producers and you know they're happy

(13:17):
with your work and they tell you you feel you
feel the positive aspects of it that no one tells
you when you're an executive.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
And I would imagine you also get to know the
taste of the various producers and kind of what they're
looking for and the sense of that by yeah Yeah.

Speaker 6 (13:35):
Especially I found true for me when I was at
Disney later on, being a casting executive isn't really the
same as being a casting director. Casting executives oversee the
casting of other work and other people's casting directors. You
cast your casting director along with the director and producer
who they have either worked with before or they meet
some new people, but you're supervising the process, which really

(13:56):
basically means you're an intermediary between their casting process and
your executatives who are going to be signing off on
this casting, and also an intermediary between the deal making
process and the attorneys or lawyers that are making the
deals and the agents. As an executive, I found what
was really great was there was this sort of whole
other layer of closeness to the decision making process. I

(14:17):
felt as an executive, I could even be more effective
with the thing I loved most casting new people, because
you know, these people knew me and they trusted me,
and these were the ultimate decision makers. And I could
also help support the filmmakers. And I'm going to digress
with one story about Channing Tatum. I was casting a

(14:38):
movie and I'm trying to remember it was Annapolis or
mister three thousand. But I was asked to me channing
Tatum and he came in and he read for me.
It was his first audition, I mean, he not auditioned
for anything before, and you know, he had so much
there was just something, you know, And I called him
back because I just thought, the guy has something. I mean,

(15:00):
he hadn't done anything, but he had something. We didn't
end up casting him, but a few years later we
were casting the first Step Up and Anne Fletcher, who
was directing it, and he auditioned that's who they wanted
to cast in the lead. And you know, he at
that point was still unknown. And I got that tape
and I saw, oh my god, that's the guy. That's

(15:22):
the guy. And so that when I went to my bot,
I don't remember who it was. I was near to Jacobson.

Speaker 5 (15:27):
I don't know. I had so many different people that
I worked.

Speaker 6 (15:29):
For, lots of bosses at Disney, lots of bosses, but
I just said, like, I have been in the room
with this guy.

Speaker 5 (15:34):
This guy is a star. Like I know it.

Speaker 6 (15:36):
I felt it then and I just you know, And
so I was able to support their film that way,
and that comes out of the fact that I cussed
thirty movies while I was at Disney. Crazy, but I
did do that. Anyway, I left Warner Brothers. They were
merging with Laura mar That really wasn't a place for me.
I went back on my own business. I went right
back to work. I was doing tons of television. I
wanted to get back into film because Judith and I

(15:58):
had done at least one or two films a year,
so I had a regular business. And then I got
a call from somebody at Paramount. They needed a casting
director for it was a major feature film, big producer,
big director. They really didn't have any money and that
was clueless, and I said, yeah, I want to meet
on that. So I ended up casting that, and right

(16:20):
when I was coming to the end of that, somebody
called me again. The person who was the Disney was leaving.
Did I want to go meet And at the time,
you know, my business was going very well and I
was getting back into film, and I thought, you know,
they're not going to hire me because I've just had
all this career in television.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
Everything's an approval thing.

Speaker 6 (16:38):
So if I go and I meet these guys, which
was David Vogelan Donald's a line at the time. Then
someone says, oh, what about Marcia Ross to cast this thing?
You know the Oh we met her, Yeah, we like
her short. So I went on the meeting, but I
wasn't sure, and I really I owe a lot to
these two guys, and one MS Adam Schroeder, who was
my day to day producer. The main producer was Scott Ruden,

(17:00):
and he said, do you want me to ask Scott
to call And at the time I said no because
I wasn't really sure I wanted the job, because then
I was going on also I was casting Bound, which
was the first film for the Rashawski Brothers. But they
called me back and I decided that I was going
to go on a call back. Then I had to
really want the job, and I figured it'll be like
a five year job, like my job at Warner Brothers.

(17:23):
You know, I'll leave that job at the end, just
like I did when I left Warner Brothers, where I
was working all the time, But now I would have
all these new relationships. I went back on the interview,
and I think they also it turned out like the
fact that I had a lot of executive experience that
there wasn't going to be this big learning curve for me.
And then Scott Ruden called, which you know, at that time,

(17:44):
having Scott Ruden call was a big deal, and I
got that job and I ended up being there for
sixteen years, and then that ended when a certain person
was getting rid of lots of people. Because at that point,
you know all this, you don't have to put this in.

Speaker 5 (17:58):
You know, you reach it.

Speaker 4 (18:00):
Corporate life, it's you reach a certain point.

Speaker 6 (18:02):
You know what I always say about corporate life, You
serve at the will of the king, which is that
is a new king. Sorry, you know, you know, sorry,
But it didn't matter because I had really always planned
to go back on my own business. Honestly, I thought
i'd go back after five years, not sixteen. But in
the interim I had a daughter. You know, I was
able to really create a department for myself that really

(18:24):
was fantastic. I mean, I was casting a couple movies
a year I was overseeing. I worked with some incredible
people over there who really trusted me, and I had
an opportunity to cast some incredible films where I discovered
people and these people trusted me and let that happen,
so I felt very effective, and then I went back
on my own business, which I was in for seven years.

(18:46):
In twenty twelve, I met Jeff was my husband now,
and I started producing documentaries with him, which is what
I've been doing. And I didn't really stop casting, probably
until around twenty seventeen, because we were just traveling so
much for the films where that I didn't need to
do both anymore. I can honestly say. I was talking
about this with some casting directors the other night, and

(19:07):
by the way, fantastic news were finally getting our Casting
Academy Award, which has been denied.

Speaker 4 (19:12):
The casting directors saw that, congratulations.

Speaker 6 (19:14):
Over we'd been trying since On MC god knows, I
was saying to David Rubin, who used to be president
of the Academy, but he's a fantastic cast director. I
went to the Academy with him as like ninety six
ninety seven, Mike Fenton, the late Mike Fenton, a great
casting director, had been part of this group of people,
and Mike couldn't go one day, so I went with
David and Arthur Hiller, you know, was the president then.

Speaker 5 (19:38):
I mean, it's been a long haul.

Speaker 6 (19:40):
To get the branch, to get you know, to get
the Academy Award. But I say from I just feel
like I really had a great career. You know, I
did everything I wanted to do. Could I have still
kept casting, Yeah, but it would have meant I couldn't
do a lot of other things I was interested in doing.
And I didn't really think there was like more I
could really do that was like different, and then you

(20:01):
know what I had done. I really feel because of
Zoom and what happened during COVID, it's not returning to
the way it was very more minimally where you're in
the room with people, that incredible experience of having somebody
walk into the room.

Speaker 5 (20:16):
I'll tell you.

Speaker 6 (20:17):
Another casting story, and I'll tell you exactly this casting story.
I was working on this movie Murder in Mississippi and
it was the eighties. It had been a feature film
at Warners, but because they had done that Mississippi burning,
they didn't feel they could just do another one, so
it went over to television and I ended up casting.
I had gone to New York to do some casting,
and I met Andre Brower at the late Andre Brower

(20:38):
what a great actor, you know, he had just graduated Jiard.
I think he maybe had done Kojak and he came
in to read for me and he was so great.
So I gave him a callback, and I don't know,
sometimes you know, callbacks don't go great. And his callback
because I was raving about this actor and the callback
didn't go great. And so I said, well, I to
take some of the whispers to my director of producas,
you know, maybe could you hell, you know, could you

(21:01):
just talk to Andrea a little more about the way.
I don't know, I said something, so my director, my producer,
and then Andre read again and when he read again,
they were sobbing.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
Everybody was crying.

Speaker 6 (21:13):
He played Dave Dennisith that who does the eulogy for
you know, the three civil rights workers that were killed.
He was a real person anyway. I mean, that's the
kind of thing you know, when you're in a casting
session that happens.

Speaker 5 (21:26):
Is like when you were at a screen.

Speaker 6 (21:27):
Test and you see two people read together and there's
this magic and you know, you know, when you saw
Paul Rudd read with actually with the Alicia Silverstone, you
couldn't deny what was happening. You know, it's you're not
really in the room the same way anymore. It's all
it's most of it's on zoom. So I'm sort of
glad I'm the age I am and had the career

(21:47):
that I had when I did, you know, being a
casting director in the eighties and the nineties or and
even into the you know, it was a great time.

Speaker 4 (21:58):
Yes, And I was going to say, I'm so excited
to hear about Bound because I saw that at Sundance.
Was it at Sundance?

Speaker 5 (22:06):
I didn't finish? Can I start? I brought in Gina Gershaw.

Speaker 6 (22:08):
Yeah, I had started casting it for them, the guys
then yeah, and then I got the job at Disney,
so Nancy Foy ended up taking it over. But I
cast a couple of parts and then I didn't finish it.
I couldn't finish it because change it. Yeah, I mean,
that was just so exhilarating. It was the time when
you would be somewhere and you would see the magic
happen that doesn't happen anymore, whether it's magic in a

(22:31):
casting room or you know, being in the early days
of Sundance, when you know, you could tell which films.

Speaker 4 (22:37):
Were about to pop and they didn't come in that way, right,
Like people know before Sundance these days what films to
be looking for, right, and sometimes it's done well Sundance.

Speaker 6 (22:47):
I started going to Sundance in the eighties, in those days,
and I mean when I was older brothers, I was going.
You know, you'd go to a movie and the actress
would stay for Q and A. You could go up them,
or you'd see them later on main Street and you'd
walk up to them and give them your business card
and say, hey, you know, if you don't have an agent,
if you have an agent, here's my card, Like when

(23:08):
you're in LA, I'd love to sit down with you
in the office, which happened all the time. I went
to Sundands for fourteen years. By the time I stopped going,
that was no longer happening. And that's you know, it's
they're all it's like a celebrity. It's a great way
to launch a movie and do publicity. And I understand
everyone needs to do it. I said to somebody. I
remember because I would go every year and I would
do these reports for my group, you know, up and

(23:29):
coming talent. But really what it did was it became
later on an opportunity to see people that everyone knew
one way in big movies, do something different in a
smaller movie. And then you could go and say, because
again that's part of as a casting director. You're a
little in a rolodex, which is, well did you see this?
Did you see that? Did you see you know? Oh no,

(23:51):
but they were like this in this movie. I think
I remember seeing Matt Dillon. I'm having a memory now.
I remember seeing Matt Dillon in a movie at sundown
and then we were casting something and it's like Matt Dylan,
like nobody could picture Matt Dillon. But I said, well,
I just know Matt Dillon, you know, and you can
get the film and you can show them and then
it changes people's minds. So you must have that sort

(24:13):
of vocabulary when you when you're a casting director.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
One of the interesting things that you were saying is
that as you took on executive roles, you continue to
do casting.

Speaker 4 (24:24):
Do most casting directors do that or is that no? Yeah,
as some let go of that day to day kind of.

Speaker 5 (24:30):
It's it different, yes, I mean I don't.

Speaker 4 (24:33):
They're very different skills.

Speaker 5 (24:35):
Different skills. A lot of people who are.

Speaker 6 (24:37):
Executives now kind of came up as executives.

Speaker 5 (24:41):
Some did some casting.

Speaker 6 (24:43):
I mean the older people or were who are executizing
now they have come most many did, but in the
newer realm of things, they usually just started with somebody
who was a casting executive and they trained on their
desk and they learned.

Speaker 5 (24:57):
It's a very different skill. It's casting.

Speaker 6 (25:00):
Sure, you got to have good taste, you got to
how to work with people, you got to understand, you
got to understand all that thing. But you're not out
there on the trenches, you know, seeing the thousand, you
know the five hundred.

Speaker 5 (25:09):
Or whatever it is that you need to see.

Speaker 6 (25:12):
You know, you're supervising people and and sort of some
often orchestrating very delicate political situations. So no, I don't know.
I mean, you know what happened was that Warner Brothers.
I did it because there were times that it just
wasn't busy. But when I came to Disney, they were,
you know, they thought I was kidding, I think at
the time, because it actually became an issue.

Speaker 5 (25:34):
I said, listen, you have.

Speaker 6 (25:35):
To I'm not going to take the job. If I
can't still cast from time to time, I won't be happy.
Really because it really was the more creative part of
the job. The first job I did at Disney was
direct to videos. Honey, we shrunk ourselves. It's just sort
of all of it sort of snuck under the radar,
you know, kind of thing.

Speaker 5 (25:54):
But you know, over time.

Speaker 6 (25:55):
What happened was that some of my executives, you know,
Ninaj Jacobson and a couple of others, they liked having
me cast things because I think there was a feeling
that there was more control over what was happening because
I was right there in the room. And also it
saved a lot of these productions money because I had
my staff doing things that would have had to come
out of a budget. But I didn't do a lot

(26:17):
because I didn't want to take work from casting directors.

Speaker 5 (26:19):
So I want to clarify something.

Speaker 6 (26:20):
I never ever did a movie that came with the
casting director or producer and director wanted a particular casting director.
The only movies that I ever cast were movies that
it was like a brand new person. They did not
have a casting director unless they requested me. I had
a job, So the last thing I was ever going
to do was take a job from another casting director.

(26:42):
So the only jobs I did were ones where I
was asked to do it. And also there was no
casting director who should have had the job right away.

Speaker 4 (26:50):
And was that ten Things I Hate about You one
of those?

Speaker 5 (26:52):
Yes, that was one of them.

Speaker 4 (26:56):
We also watched that recently.

Speaker 5 (26:58):
It really holds up.

Speaker 4 (26:59):
Totally holds up, It really holds up.

Speaker 5 (27:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:02):
Yeah, And oh my god, those performances are magical. They're
so captivating. Heath Ledger is amazing. Yeah, Julius Stiles is amazing,
Joseph Gordon Levitt is amazing. They're all amazing. Yeah, So
tell us about that that experience, because you cast that one.

Speaker 5 (27:18):
Yes. First of all, Gil Younger was the director and
it was his first movie movie.

Speaker 6 (27:24):
Yeah. Yeah, And you know what I have to say
about Gil that I loved was I've worked with a
few directors like him, and when an actor would come
in and they audition, that he could give them like
a note, and a good actor could get the note
and just change the performance. Like he knew right away,
oh they took the note, they didn't, but he knew
what note to give, you know. It was like he

(27:45):
knew what to tell actors to get what he wanted
or not get what he wanted, you know, that was amazing.

Speaker 5 (27:50):
And he was also really decisive.

Speaker 6 (27:52):
So like when I brought in Gabrielle Union, which was
her first movie, even though the another movie she did
came out first, I never brought another person for that part.
I mean, he was like, that's it, that's it's her,
she's that part.

Speaker 5 (28:03):
That's it.

Speaker 6 (28:04):
He just knew, you know, he knew, he felt it,
and he was decisive. So Heath Ledger came in. He
was in town from Australia and he'd actually done I
think a movie two Hands, or he had to go
back and finish this movie two Hands in Australia. But
Steve Alexander was his agent It's See at the time,
and he said, I've got this guy, and you meet him.
And he came in and he read and actually his

(28:25):
reading wasn't great when he read for us in the office,
but there was something like different and unusual about him,
and I really trusted Steve's taste, and I thought, well,
Steve went to sign this guy if there wasn't something,
So you know, I said, look and make sure that
you really like read the script and work on the material,
you know, really be prepared this time. You know, because
I was willing to give another chance because I just

(28:47):
thought there's something I don't know what it is. Even
though this wasn't a great audition, and when he came
in to read, oh wow, you know, the next time
he read, he was completely prepared and he was fantastic,
and so, you know, we continued to have readings. In
the end, we did screen tests, you know that we
had to do screen tests, and we tested a couple
of other people and Julia and Heath and we mixed

(29:08):
and rematched. But then of course, you know, Julia was
had just done some really interesting independent films that have
been in Sundance, and nobody knew who Heath was. So like, okay,
well we're making this movie and with two people know
whenever heard of them, so you know, who are we
going to put around them? Okay? So that also became
part of the casting thing. And Joseph Gordon Levitt, you know,

(29:32):
was on Third Rock from the Sun and so he
had some name value. And Larissa Olnek had been in
Clarissa and the actor that played Joey, who's not in
the business. I was able to bring in all these
magazines because he was in every teen magazine on the planet,
so you know, we were able to assemble around them
some really recognizable names. I was thinking about this too,

(29:55):
because I saw Alison, Johnny and something and we had
this teacher part and we hadn't cast it. I remember
Donald's a line. He was like, I want someone really
interesting in that part. We got to do something special.
We got to do somebody really interesting. And I have
no idea. I mean where we came up with Alice
and Johnny. You know, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (30:14):
Where I'd even see her. But she wasn't done that much.

Speaker 6 (30:17):
She'd probably done some television, but she was unique and
she was up and coming, and that was like, oh
my god.

Speaker 4 (30:22):
Everyone was so excited because she was fantastic.

Speaker 5 (30:25):
She was fantastic. Yeah, and then I was up.

Speaker 6 (30:27):
We did cast a lot of the smaller parts up
in because we shot an in Tacoma at the school
up there, but I did a lot of the smaller parts.
I went up there out of Seattle.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
Okay, that's interesting that the sort of if you know
the chemistry is going to work, because it's always a risk.

Speaker 5 (30:44):
There's always a risk.

Speaker 6 (30:45):
But you know, that's why you screen test, because it's
either there it's not. You can't make that stuff up.
That's the thing. You cannot make it up. You see
it or you don't see it. And you know, the
two actors don't even have.

Speaker 5 (30:59):
To like each other. Even what is that Sea of love?

Speaker 6 (31:04):
That famous story about Ellen Barkin and Alpacina, But wow,
they had great chemistry.

Speaker 5 (31:08):
So it's it's on.

Speaker 6 (31:10):
Film, that's the thing. The film is a different thing.
People sometimes say, well, how do you know? You know,
what's a movie star? And it's much harder to be
a movie star today because there's not enough big movies
to cement a person's career, you know, in the firmament.

Speaker 5 (31:24):
Like it used to be.

Speaker 6 (31:25):
But it's not always just the acting, because people can
grow and get better as actors. But someone is either
compelling or they are not compelling. Compelling you want to
watch the person, doesn't matter even if they're you know,
a little green or a little this or a that.
You want to watch them. And if you want to
watch somebody, that's what makes them a star. That's what
he hit Leger you know you're a down yeah, or

(31:48):
Channing Tatum. I mean these people come in they haven't
done anything, but you know, you just know oh wait,
I'm paying attention.

Speaker 5 (31:54):
I don't know why.

Speaker 6 (31:56):
And I thought a lot about it in the last
years when I was casting, about what that thing is,
you know, that feeling here? You know, how do I know?
People says, well, how do you know? I said, well,
I just feel it. And I think a lot of
casting directors would tell you this. There's a lot of
wonderful casting directors working today who done amazing work, and
many of them have worked for quite a while, and they,

(32:17):
you know, I think would all say the same thing.
I think when you you've done it a lot, your
brain and your you know, your mind and your body
are very connected, and your brain, you feel it. Your
mind just knows that it sends the message to your
body before you have time to realize you actually thought
about it. I don't know how to put it any

(32:38):
other way.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
Instinctual.

Speaker 5 (32:40):
It sounds like it's just after a while, you know.
And also you have to trust.

Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yourself well, and you spent your lifetime kind of watching
for that. Yeah, and that's as a child, you know,
see like who pops right?

Speaker 5 (32:53):
And I did it as a child.

Speaker 6 (32:54):
As one last story about that, you know, i'd come home,
I had all my programs.

Speaker 5 (32:57):
I used to keep them all. I still have them
in a box in the garage.

Speaker 6 (33:00):
But you know, I'd come home with these programs and
I talked to my mother, say in the kitchen with
my mother, well this actor.

Speaker 5 (33:06):
You know.

Speaker 6 (33:06):
My mother was like, you know, rolling her eyes, but
oh my god, look it was the understudy here, and
look it was the standby, and look it was who
was in that regional production. I was fascinated by all that.
So I just had this mind that could retain a
lot of that kind of information.

Speaker 5 (33:23):
And it was a great interest to me.

Speaker 4 (33:26):
Yeah, and I think that's the key. It was of interest.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
And so you spent time learning it and not realizing
that you were going to do anything with it, but
just you were just interested, right that started, Yeah, training yourself.

Speaker 6 (33:35):
Just why. I feel like when I really got my
first casting job, it was like it like a lego,
you know, it's like boom. You know, it was an
advocation and a passion in my work. It was like
an amazing thing to me to find work that answered
all of the things I cared about and liked.

Speaker 4 (33:50):
And do you remember what that project was?

Speaker 5 (33:52):
Oh, it was just a job and casting it was
just a job in casting that it was the.

Speaker 6 (33:55):
First job in casting. Oh that's it. I don't know
how to explain the other way.

Speaker 4 (34:01):
Okay, so we're going to take a quick break. Okay,
we'll be right back, and we're back. Was there a
moment when you were working with anybody, but with Judith
maybe where you were like, oh, yeah, this is my
career now.

Speaker 5 (34:18):
It always was.

Speaker 6 (34:19):
It was always that I didn't think I'd ever do
anything except maybe my mind or was psychology, but you
use a lot of psychology and casting anyway. So no,
I mean I always wanted to be in show business,
and I started casting when I was twenty three, twenty four. No,
I never thought about doing anything else. The only thing
I did think was, at some point in my life

(34:40):
I did want to do something else.

Speaker 5 (34:42):
Not because I didn't like casting.

Speaker 6 (34:44):
But because I thought, you know, I'm always so admire
those people who are willing to pivot in life, and
I'm afraid kind of that fearless thing that people make
life changes like that. I started thinking about that probably
in my forties, actually, right around the time I was
working at Disney. Not because I was I need to
leave casting, but because I just had this idea in
my mind that it might be interesting to do something

(35:06):
else someday, just because that's a fearless thing to do.
And then ultimately when I when I met Jeff, and
you know, I started working with him on the documentaries
and I started producing with him. You know. Well, in
twenty twelve, my dad died and I decided to go
back to college because I'd never got my college degree.
And one of the reasons I did go back to
college was because I was thinking about this and I thought, well,

(35:30):
I want to do something where I am not casting.
But I'm not not casting, so I was still casting
while I was going to school.

Speaker 4 (35:38):
And what did you wear?

Speaker 6 (35:39):
And I went to Antioch, but I went, I didn't
just take I needed like forty eight credits actually, so
I went. I went for four years. I would do
like four credits a quarter, you know, because I was
working full time, I had a kid at home. I
was like the whole thing. And the class was like
once a week, you know. So I do two classes
back to back, you know, once a week, and I
get my six credits or my or whatever. And I

(35:59):
love going to school. I loved going to school. I
loved studying. I love reading I loved talking about all
these things that, like I were really things that really
interested me.

Speaker 5 (36:08):
That weren't my work.

Speaker 6 (36:09):
So I realized doing that that like there was a
possibility that I could live and not do casting. And
then you know what it did find in the transition
to producing with Jeff in addition to all the relationships
that I had as a result of so many years
in casting, many of the things that I did in
casting from you know, working on budgets and dealing with

(36:30):
numbers and dealing with lawyers and dealing with insurance issues
and dealing with talent and being on a set with
actors and you know, seeing and going to test screenings
and looking at you know.

Speaker 5 (36:42):
What was happening.

Speaker 6 (36:43):
All those things that I had done in casting lent
themselves completely to documentary filmmaking.

Speaker 4 (36:48):
And producing and producing. Yeah, and so when did you
start in documentaries? And by the way, the Terrence McNally, Oh, yeah,
is amazing. Every act of Life.

Speaker 5 (36:59):
Every active life, Yeah is great. Thank you.

Speaker 4 (37:01):
We had a blast watching it and I can't wait
to watch now Nasreen Nazarene. Yeah, so that's next on
my list. But what kind of drew you to documentaries? Yeah?

Speaker 6 (37:11):
I know, it wasn't him. It was n't but it
wasn't him. Because I always love documentaries, and every year
when i'd go to Sundance, I'd probably try to see
two documentaries amongst the five films a.

Speaker 5 (37:21):
Day I was seeing.

Speaker 6 (37:22):
I just always really liked documentaries because you learn a lot.
Even if it's not a good you learn something. You
take something from it in a different way than you
don't from a bad narrative film. Except if you're seeing
you know you, Oh I saw a good actor, then
there's a lot of value.

Speaker 5 (37:36):
So I was always really interested.

Speaker 6 (37:37):
I remember thinking, oh, someday I want to just come
here and just go to documentaries because you know, I
don't have to think about who's in all these things.
I could just like experience the film. In twenty twelve,
he had a film, a wonderful jazz film called The
Savoy King about Chick Web and Elvitzgerald and the Savoy
Ballroom in New York. It's a great, incredible story and
it got into the New York Film Festival. So I

(37:59):
went with him to the New York Film Festival. But
this time I was not going as a casting director.
I was going just as his companion, so to speak.
You know, he had a PR person who I didn't know,
but I could see, you know, all the stuff that
wasn't happening around issues that you know, PR interviews, a
lot of stuff that I could see, Wait a minute,

(38:21):
this isn't how it should be. I went to a
lot of film festivals. You're at the New York Film Festival.
This person is not doing the job, because this is
not going to get what it needs without the right
person doing it. So when I came back, you know,
I started to talk you remember hi to Jada.

Speaker 5 (38:36):
Did you know Heidi? Oh yeah, Heidi was a good
friend to me, and she was very helpful.

Speaker 6 (38:40):
And I started talking to people and trying to figure out,
you know, things we could do for the film, to
do many things, and that's how it really started. The
next film, which he had decided to do, was about
Father Joseph was a Haitian priest who had started the
first microfinance bank mostly for women, you know, and hey,

(39:00):
and so I started to get involved with that. I
was still working, so I didn't go to Haiti till later.
And then it was like at one point on like
watching auditions for something like that. But you know, like
really in a car, you know, it's crazy. And then
what happened was that there was an issue that he
had had. Cultrip planned raised the money, the whole thing,

(39:21):
and Father Joseph said, you can't come. They've been all
these kidnappings. It's a bad time. And he called me,
and you know when he was very depressed, and I
was like, let's talk about it. So we met and
we talked about it, and in the end, I just said,
we'll find a way. You know, we will find a way.
If we have to get you another bodyguard and somebody else,
you're going, which he did end up going. But he said,

(39:42):
I have another idea, and he started to tell me
the story of actually who became the film The State
of Marriage, about Beth Robinson and Susan Murray and Mary Bonata.
But these two small towns for Mount lawyers who basically
changed the world because they came up with the first
legal arguments in the United States for civil Union and
sat and you know same SA benefits incredible women whose

(40:02):
stories I felt would be forgotten if we did not
tell them. And I love the story. But then he
did go. But then I was taking my daughter to
New York. She was going to be doing a summer
program at NYU between her sophomore, junior, and senior year
at school. And I was supposed to do a film,
and I kept saying, I'm taking my daughter, I'm doing this,
and they're like pushing it. But I said at some

(40:23):
point I walked away. I said I can't. I can't,
Like you can't keep pushing the start. Day you asked
me to do this work, you're pushing the start. Then
the movie just never happened anyway. So I just said,
come meet me in New York. Let's go to Vermont
and talk to everybody. And so we spent nine days
traveling all over in Vermont and we did some work
in New York and in Boston. Also we went with Mary.
Then I was starting to get more and more, and

(40:45):
actually was during that film that we met Terrence and
his husband Tom Curdie. It's a very successful theater producer now,
you know, because Jeff had found out in his research
that they had gone to get a civil union when
it first became legal in Vermont, and Jeff had lived. Also,
this is the only film we've done where Jeff had
actual personal experience because he lived in Vermont for six

(41:07):
and a half years. He had a radio show talking Vermont.
It was, you know seven He did it for almost
seven years, five days a week as progressive radio, you know,
a talk show.

Speaker 5 (41:15):
So he was around for all of this. So he
knew a lot of these people. He had a lot
of connections. So it was incredible. They agreed to let
us interview them about it, and we walk into their apartment,
you know, in New York City, and I mean, first
of all, i'd seen all of these terrors mcdadley plays,
you know, so that was one thing. But then you're
in the apartment and you know it's not just the

(41:37):
Tony's but just the photos, you know, with this one
and that one and oh my god, you know this
is the theater key here. So Jeff had said, look,
you know, if we like them and we think that,
you know, maybe there's a possibility no one's done anything
about terrorists. What do you think if we asked them?
I said, yeah, let's do it. So we approached them.

Speaker 6 (41:55):
After it took about a year because they were Tom
was busy raising money and traveling for I think a
stage at the time. Finally, after about a year, they
agreed and we embarked on making that film and it
was an incredible you know, I mean going to Angela
Lansberg was casting. Yeah, I mean, you know Cheta Rivera,
you know, Rita Moreno, people like that, and also people

(42:15):
like Christine Baranski and Nathan Lane and some of the
other actors. I met Joe Mantella when I was at
Warner Brothers because I had seen him in Angels in
America at the taper. So I had met with Joe,
you know, at a casting meeting, and now you know,
we're interviewing him or other actors. There were a number
of actors that I had met back in my New
York days other times in my life. So it was

(42:35):
a combination of like legends. Yes, being at John Candor's
townhouse and sitting at his piano and playing piano with him.

Speaker 5 (42:43):
It's life changing.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
Yeah. The casting of that documentary is pretty great.

Speaker 5 (42:47):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 6 (42:48):
And I was really like great because to get like
Meryl Streep and and also Brian Cranston.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
You know.

Speaker 5 (42:54):
But then against that's from casting because.

Speaker 6 (42:57):
I knew who to call and who to connect with
so that we could get them the materials. The same
with Olivia Coleman, who narrates Nazarene.

Speaker 5 (43:05):
I had ways.

Speaker 6 (43:06):
Doesn't mean she was going to say yes, but I
had ways to get to people. And Jeff was very
smart because he did a lot of homework on her
and he knew that she had a very strong interest
in human rights and you know, knew a lot about it.
So he wrote a beautiful letter and I was able
to get to this person, and that person finally got to.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
Her to her. Yeah, yeah, that's very key. Yeah, that's amazing.
And while we're on the documentaries, Nazarene, do you want
to tell us lie?

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Right?

Speaker 6 (43:32):
So Nazreene is about Nazreene so Today, who is an
Iranian human rights attorney and political plearsoner and one of
the most extraordinary people ever come across in your life.
She's devoted her life to representing women, children, you know,
people facing the death penalty. More people are killed there

(43:53):
than any other country in the world, children's rights, women's rights.
I mean, she's been in prison of times because of
her work. While we were making the film, she started
representing clients from the Girls of Revolution Street, which was
the movement of people taking their jabs off in the
public and she was arrested and sent to Bene prison

(44:13):
right in the middle of making the movie. We were
able to finish the movie. We still worked on her
for a couple more years, and then one of the
things we did, which is what we have been doing
the last few years. She's home now on a medical furlough,
but we launched a free Neazreen campaign in conjunction with
the release of that film. We spoke in front of
the European Union Parliament and all kinds of human rights

(44:34):
groups around the world. It's been seen all over the place,
even in Iran. But she's just a remarkable individual. And
she also when we approached her about doing it, she
said that she didn't want it to just be about her,
but the community. So the film is really about her.
She's the focus of it, but it's also the community
of women that she has worked with in the human

(44:55):
rights sphere in Iran.

Speaker 5 (44:56):
Lots of them are in.

Speaker 6 (44:57):
Prison or they've been able to get out of the country.
It's a horrible situation.

Speaker 4 (45:00):
It sounds like it, but she's out right now.

Speaker 6 (45:02):
Right now, she's home on a medical furlough. She right
before the movie opened, or Will Always had his premiere
in October of twenty twenty, she had gone on a
hunger strike to protest the fact that they were doing
nothing about COVID in the prisons, and it.

Speaker 5 (45:19):
Was sparked like a real worldwide outcry.

Speaker 6 (45:22):
She did that to bring attention to what was happening
to other people, and she ended up, you know, with
a heart condition and she had COVID. So she was
able to come home and she had some kind of
heart surgery. She's okay now, but she's you know, going
back to prison. She was in prison again recently. She's
home again because she you know, the young woman she

(45:46):
was like sixteen or seventeen, and she was beaten to
death in the subway in Tehran. So she went to
her funeral to support the family with no hijab, and
they were beaten and her glasses were broken and she
got a minor conc and she was in prison for
a little bit of times. But she's home now on bail.

Speaker 4 (46:04):
It's terrifying, but also really important the work that everybody
there is doing and that that documentaries are focusing on.
But how did you guys meet her or get involved
in this.

Speaker 6 (46:15):
Well, before I met Jeff, he'd done a number of
smaller human rights films for Amnesty and some other things.
And then he had done a film called Education under Fire,
which was a thirty minute film about the persecution of
the Bahigh faith in Iran. That's, you know, they can't
get an education, they can't own property, they can't own business.
I mean, it's an incredibly abused minority there. And he

(46:38):
came across Nazaren because she was representing Bahis. So here
was this Muslim woman risking her life to represent people
not of her own faith. And this was intriguing and
I think, in keeping with what really interests both of us,
all of our films have one thing in common. They're
about people who sacked a lot. They don't make a

(47:02):
lot of money. They are in danger, often physical danger,
professional danger, all kinds of danger. They're not always reward
often not rewarded financially, but they feel really committed to
doing work that makes a difference in the lives of
other people. And Terrence was that way too. I mean,
Terrence is the first really out American playwright who also

(47:24):
was putting LGBTQ people on stage in plays in a
very real way where people could identify, you know, with
it and see it, and you know he was people
said he was gay when he was like when he
was very young dating Edward Alby. You know, so he
never was in the closet, never, and so he used
that in the most positive of ways.

Speaker 5 (47:43):
And it look, it wasn't easy. Yeah, no one else
was doing it.

Speaker 6 (47:47):
Everyone else was protecting a lot of There were a
lot of gay people, you know, men especially, but nobody
was out like Terrence. So he was one of a kind.

Speaker 4 (47:57):
Yeah, amazing. Okay, So let's go back to Disney then or.

Speaker 5 (48:02):
The eighties or the seventies.

Speaker 4 (48:04):
Yeah, you know, well we got okay, a I have
to ask you about Kujo, sure, because I'm a huge
Daniel Hugh Kelly fan.

Speaker 5 (48:13):
Oh Danny Kelly. Yeah, and he was on a soap.

Speaker 6 (48:16):
He was on a soap, Ryan's Well, right, he was
on Ryan's Hope, which, by the way, Jerry Rittern harn Feurer,
who I mentioned earlier, they cast Ryan's Hope.

Speaker 5 (48:24):
Danny Kelly was on that sope. But I knew Danny
Kelly from New York.

Speaker 6 (48:29):
And actually the first year I worked with Judith, we
had a pilot that we did for CBS called Murder Inc.
With Danny Kelly, Daniel U Kelly and Tovah Felchel, which
you know was complicated, but Toba Felchell was the female
lead and Ellen Barkin played this new aged weaver in

(48:49):
this like a small role. So we went to New
York and we did some casting out of it. That's
how we knew Danny. Well, I've probably knew Danny just
from being around New York in the seventies.

Speaker 4 (48:58):
But yeah, and d Wall and that was like the
first horror film I ever saw in the theater, and man,
it was pretty terrifying because it was a dog.

Speaker 5 (49:06):
Well it wasn't a yeah, it was it was a dog. Yeah.
You know, it's so funny that there's interest.

Speaker 6 (49:12):
I was contacted a number of years ago by a
guy in Australia who's written a book about it, and
they've just released I should have bought a few, you know.
I did sort of cover, you know, like interview for
the back of the you know, the DVD special and
they've just released like a fortieth which I can't even
believe was forty years I remember working in that movie

(49:32):
very vividly, but the fortieth anniversary is like a double
bonus redone. I'm so surprised with the interest in that movie.

Speaker 4 (49:42):
Well, and it's d wall I mean, like it's a
great cast.

Speaker 5 (49:44):
And that was right because well after Et you know, yeah,
she was our big name. Yeah, she just sent me
to New.

Speaker 6 (49:50):
York and I remember I was working out a Martin Gage.
It was an agent in New York. I was working
out of his office and we cast Danny Pintero. I
had to go find the kid. That's where I found
him in New York. But that's why I went to
New York. And then Kylelinie Lee came out of there
and Louder we did. You know, Judith loved him. We
brought him in for everything, and you know, some of
the parts were cast here and we cast a number

(50:11):
of them from New York. But really just because we
really had to find the kid.

Speaker 4 (50:14):
Yeah. Was that at the same time that he was
in hard Castle McCormack.

Speaker 5 (50:18):
I don't really about the same time. I don't really remember.

Speaker 4 (50:21):
Yeah, it's around the same time. My husband and our
big Stephen Canell fans and so hard Castle is a
big one, and so that's between Kujo and Hardcastle. McCormack.
I was like, Daniel Kelly's amazing.

Speaker 5 (50:35):
He was a lovely, charming man. I haven't seen him
in a long time.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
Well, and then it was also the Stephen King of
it All ye, and it was a very good adaptation,
probably the first great adaptation of Stephen King, which was hard.
You know, not everybody got that adaptation.

Speaker 6 (50:51):
Well, you know, now you have special effects, but they didn't.
They had like a real dog.

Speaker 5 (50:55):
They had an animatronics dog that, you know, trying to
figure how.

Speaker 4 (50:58):
To get the dog, yeah, to be crazy.

Speaker 5 (51:01):
Which is like now they just do it in a
you know cgi.

Speaker 4 (51:04):
Yeah. So how often are you on set as a
casting director?

Speaker 6 (51:07):
Not really that often. Yeah, no, I mean that's the
thing about casting. You come on early, sometimes very early,
if you know you're trying to attach a couple of leads.
But essentially your work is before they start production, and
that is like what I was saying. Then the circus
leaves town and then they go to location or wherever
they're going. And the only time you really go to
set is if they're shooting in la You know, I

(51:31):
visited the set of Clues because they were shooting at
occidental Occasionally I have visited sets. The last thing I
cast was shooting in South Africa. And I went down
there because I was you know, I had never been,
and I went on my own. Jeff and I went
and we visited the set and it was creative, see
this whole place that they built down there. But most times, no,
unless you know, if I was in New York and

(51:52):
I was working, then i'd go visit a set for
something that Disney was shooting. But most of the time
you don't. You're working on something else already, you don't
have time.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
And then you see it all together. Yes, what's been
the most surprising, Like you've ever been surprised?

Speaker 5 (52:07):
You know, I don't know.

Speaker 6 (52:08):
I can't really answer that question because usually when you're
watching it the first time, you're just like hoping, no
one's terrible.

Speaker 5 (52:14):
So honestly, you know, you really.

Speaker 6 (52:17):
You're not surprising. You know, that would be a surprise
you don't want. So no, I wouldn't say, oh, what
a great surprise, how good that person turned out. No,
I think it's oh, thank god, no one was terrible.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
So it's the first time you see it usually at
the premiere.

Speaker 5 (52:32):
It was different at Disney.

Speaker 6 (52:34):
I would often go to Daily's or rolldowns, or I
find a way to go to a test screening, you know,
because I was really interested in all that and listening
to the answer, reaction and stuff. But the things that
I cast, no, I mean I didn't see, you know,
on the episodes. I saw them on TV or I
went to a premiere. I never saw them any other way.

Speaker 4 (52:51):
All right, well, thirty something, Now we're going to talk
about thirty something nineteen eighty seven breaks ground on television.
What was that like and how did you go about
sort of putting that cast together?

Speaker 5 (53:03):
Well, that was his last show I did with Judith.

Speaker 6 (53:05):
We did that pilot, and oddly enough we never did episodes,
but somehow in the contract there were episodes, and so
I did the year of the episodes, which is the support.
But the last year we were together, we did the episodes,
and I just I remember with the episodes how hard
it was at the very beginning because the show hadn't
aired yet. It's really interesting, you know, we were really
casting at a very high level. We have amazing people,

(53:27):
and you know, I'll go back to the pilot itself,
but so we were the three or four episodes we
did before it ever aired, and then when it aired,
oh my god. You know, I never worked on a
show in my entire life that got that kind of
amazing feedback like that, you know, I mean Ed and
Marshall were like being interviewed all the time. They were
in great demand, and I won all these Emmys the
first season, you know, it was. It was incredible then,

(53:50):
and it was easier in some ways to be able
to get some bigger actors to be on the show
at that point. But the pilot was not easy to cast.
I mean, you know, people don't realize I mean that.
You know, you do lists, you do availabilities. It's pilot season.
You know a lot of people have already taken other
shows or they're on shows. You know, you reach out
to people, they passed, they're not interested, they don't want

(54:11):
to do a series. In those days, we reached out
to a bunch of people who did movies, you know,
to do the leads, and they didn't do television series.

Speaker 4 (54:18):
Then.

Speaker 5 (54:19):
It's not like now.

Speaker 6 (54:20):
And I knew Ken because when I worked at Circle
in the Square. He was the boyfriend of a friend
of mine who's still my friend, and I had seen
him in the theater and actually I signed him. Monty
had never signed anybody. It was my first time clients,
so I knew k but Ken. Then Kent came to
Hollywood and he was having his own career and Ken
came in and he was really great.

Speaker 5 (54:40):
He just like nailed it.

Speaker 6 (54:41):
And then casting the part that Mel Harris played was
really really hard. That was the only part that we
really struggled with. And Mello come in to read and
we'd seen a bunch of people and we were feeling
like we didn't have it yet.

Speaker 5 (54:56):
We didn't have it, so we.

Speaker 6 (54:57):
Decided to call back people and we called her back
with those people because they've just been something interesting. And
then she came back and it was better the second time.
And then we had to go to ABC and we
had to bring the whole cast and we had, you know,
in some cases, two or three people for every role,
so we only had Ken.

Speaker 5 (55:18):
I'm trying to remember. I don't believe we brought.

Speaker 6 (55:19):
Another person to the network, but we did bring maybe
three other choices for Ken to read with in front
of the network. And you know, as the day went
on and it was a long day, he and Mel
just like we was talking about chemistry. I mean, she
came back at you know, let's do this scene. Let's
do that scene, and the more she worked with Ken,
the more the other people sort of faded away, and

(55:42):
it was so clear that they had this great chemistry.
And Patty was there that day, but that I don't know.
I think she was reading for another role. But we
loved Patty, but she was so fantastic, but you know,
she was reading because Nancy was like one line in
the pilot. I mean, she was not, you know, a
serious regular, so she was probably there reading. I can't
remember for which part, you know, Milne, of your Polly's parts,

(56:04):
I don't remember. But we really loved her and we,
you know, the guys really wanted to cast her in
the show, and so we gave her the guest star,
which you know turned into like a huge thing, which
is great because we had such a wonderful actress doing
the role. But they were both you know, really talented,
I mean ed, you know, they both feature backgrounds, and
so working with them was working at an extremely high

(56:26):
level of who you want to get for television, which
was incredible, really.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
Well incredible, especially for then, because like you're saying now,
it's very different. You can go to feature film actresses
and big names and they'll at least read stuff.

Speaker 5 (56:42):
Yeah, but they didn't have that then.

Speaker 4 (56:44):
Yeah. Oh my gosh, this interview is so exciting we're
gonna have to break it into two parts. Stay tuned
for our next episode will be part two with Miss
Marcia Ross.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
In today's audioography, you can find out more about Marcia
Ross and Jeff Kaufman's past and upcoming documentary projects at
Floatingworld Pictures dot com.

Speaker 4 (57:09):
Tell us your thoughts at Eighties tv Ladies dot com.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
As we've mentioned before, we really appreciate your feedback, so
if you like our show, please make sure to leave
us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or
Spotify or whatever platform you use, and please help us
make the show by going to Patreon dot com.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
Slash Eighties tv Ladies.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
As always, we hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy
and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows
to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward
being amazing ladies of the twenty first century.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
So bread, the City, Things, had

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Board, money in the member, anything, las

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Casting Thirtysomething & Creating Stars | Marcia Ross, Part 1

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Casting Thirtysomething & Creating Stars | Marcia Ross, Part 1