The Casting Director - Thanksgiving Casting

It’s Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving. I get the following text at 7pm from my casting assistant in New York, “Urgent! Casting Emergency! Call me!”
Let’s see, what am I doing at 7pm in L.A the day before the day before Thanksgiving? Oh that’s right, my entire family is staying at my home and I have to cook dinner for them, clean the house, go shopping for food, make sure everyone is happy, what possible “casting emergency” could be happening on a film that is supposed to take a break from Thursday to Monday, after all, there is only one more day of shooting before the break and everyone I cast has been confirmed.

The problem: On Wednesday, the shoot requires several old ladies to play ghosts and since they are non-speaking, the roles were going to be cast by the background/extras casting director. Well finding 75-90 year old ladies to work on a night shoot the night before Thanksgiving proved harder then thought. Why did they schedule that scene that evening in the first place? Anyway, they were short a couple of actresses and I was asked to see if any of the old ladies I auditioned for speaking roles that the director liked would come in and do non-speaking roles (but be paid at SAG day rate not at the extra rate) and come in on short notice.

I said I would try, and called my assistant in New York who was totally on top of the situation and to our surprise, many of the actors we phoned on Wednesday morning were more then happy to show up to set that evening and work to 3AM.

So, while it may have felt like a casting emergency, the real emergency in my life at the time was making sure my niece had enough diapers for the week.

Tags: Film Industry, , Movie, Director, Hollywood