Off Book: Conversations with Casting Directors / John Power / Episode 103

(upbeat music) My name is Elizabeth Boykevich. My friends call me EB, so that means you can call me EB as well. I am so glad you're here. I spent the last 20 years in entertainment first working in casting for theater, TV, and film. Most recently, I was the head of casting and talent while helping build two TV networks and brands at the Walt Disney Company. I am a leadership coach and facilitator. I'm a mindfulness guide, and I am a human being trying my best to human well. I dig all things around growth, creativity, curiosity, and storytelling. I realized there wasn't a place where actors could get to know casting directors and ask questions for free, so here we are. We collected over a hundred questions from actors and will be answering them alongside a different casting colleague each episode. A giant thank you to everyone who submitted questions. Links to submit a question for the podcast and our guests can be found in the notes section of each episode. I hope this supports and encourages you on your acting journey. I love you. Keep going. The world needs your voice and your creativity. Welcome to Off Book. (upbeat music) Please enjoy my very, very, very best and oldest friend, my childhood friend. I stood up in his wedding. He's my favorite person in the entire world and will probably be yours too, John Power. John's casting career spans over 20 years. He serves as the SVP, that's Senior Vice President, of casting at Warner Brothers Television. His long list of credits include some of the most seminal young adult series, including the original gossip girl, pretty little liars, Superman and Lois, all American and Riverdale. We dive deep into the studio network casting process and talk all things pilot from audition to testing to the table read. I'm learning this podcasting things I go along, apologies for my sound. I'm a bit lower in this episode. Enjoy. Here we go. Hi, John Power. Hello, good day. Good day. How are you today, sir? I am good. I'm good. I'm on day three of a month long sabbatical from work. So I'm getting re-acclimated to real life, which I feel like I haven't done into it in half years. And your company allows you to do that after our X amount of years. Yes, I am celebrating my 20th year with Warner Brothers Television casting. I see. And none of the knowns to a lot of people who work there. If you celebrate 20 years, you are given the opportunity to take a month long sabbatical, which you can use to focus on anything that you want to do to enrich your life, whether it's learning a language or travel or a signed project or-- Or being on your childhood friends podcast. Right. Yes. So I'm taking the opportunity. And it's so far, it's been great. Thank you for sharing some of your sabbatical time with me. Of course. Right before we started, this John said, we're on Zoom. He said, I may not be able to look at you. We've known each other so long. We did high school theater together. We sure did. And we grew up in the same church. Our parents were friends before we were born. So we have the type of relationship where it's hard to look at each other without laughing. Yeah. Yeah. Or going on some sort of non-essential tangents. Going into crazy church giggles. So John, I wanted to do something that actors could meet casting directors and ask questions for free. There really is not that service out there. So I thought, what about having a podcast and having some conversation? Would we start, please, sir? Would you tell-- where'd you grow up? Do you mean where did we grow up? So we grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, which is about 30 minutes outside of Manhattan, which, of course, when I was growing up, the only thing I wanted to do was get out of there. But in retrospect, it was-- I thought a really nice place to grow up. It was close enough to the city where we had exposure to arts and culture, which influenced Rhyam today. We also had a town that believed in arts programs, which I think not every town unfortunately does. So we were very privileged to be able to experience high school theater, high school glee club, high school photography classes. It was really an opportunity to expand our horizons. So now I look back on my years in Rutherford with fondness. We had access to a lot of great education, which I then used to jump into college. And where I studied communications, I went to Fairfield University, which is in Connecticut. I studied communications as my major, not really knowing what I wanted to do. At one point, I thought I was going to be journalism. And then I thought I was going to be entertainment journalism. And then I realized that I really was leaning more into the creative side of things. I ended up declaring an English literature minor and a theater minor. And those three disciplines together, I think actually gave me a really good foundation for what I'm doing today. And you were you acting in college? Yeah, I did plays in both high school and college. I'm looking back not with any kind of serious thought of being an actor. I just loved it. It was fun. It was fun to be on stage. It was fun to be in rehearsal with your friends. And when you're doing high school theater, it tends to be very-- what is the audience going to want to watch, as opposed to college theater, which tends to lean a little more into educational theater, pieces that are maybe more obscure. But you're doing them not only to perform, but also to learn about different playwrights and different eras of playwriting and classics. And I also got the opportunity to stage manager show when I was there, which I realized I was really good at. It was something I fell into. We did a production of 12th Night that you had to audition for a year in advance because it also involved a class that you had to take about Shakespeare and 12th Night. And I thought I was going to be traveling abroad. I ended up not so I was around, but I was not cast in the show because thought I wasn't going to be there. But they needed the stage manager. And I did that. And part of a career and entertainment, no matter what you're doing, purely for organizational, from an organizational perspective, it really taught me about details and about getting jobs done. When I graduated, I actually thought for a hot minute that I might want to go into professional stage management. And then that did not really materialize either. That was my college journey and I graduated and soon after moved into New York City with some friends from college. And that's where my professional journey began. I was allowed to experience a lot of different jobs because when you're just starting out and you know that you want your career to be quote unquote, entertainment. But you don't really know what you're doing. You just take the jobs that are available. Have to pay bills. And not only did I take the jobs that were available, but when you're an assistant in the entertainment business, it also involves side jobs because they're not paid very well assistance. So before I graduated, the very first professional experience I had was on the summer before my senior year because I lived so close to New York City. I was able to get an internship on a television show which was all my children, which is no longer with us. I spent my summer a couple days a week going into the city and working on that show as basically a production intern which involved all kinds of different jobs, really no major responsibility, which was good because you're able to just learn as you're going about how a television show is put together. This was the '90s. There's a lot of photocopying of scripts and putting them in mailboxes and distributing schedules to the actors and running things up to the network and doing all kinds of basically task rapid type tasks. It was great because in addition to having that professional experience, it also introduced me to people who work in the business. And they were instrumental in helping me get my first paid professional job outside of college once I graduated. So that was the receptionist at a talent agency called Paradigm which is one of the bigger agencies that still exists. Again, my job was answering the phone and taking the mail in. But this is back in the day when actors when they had auditions, they had to come to the office and literally pick up scripts. Philip C. Moore Hoffman had a couple of auditions. He would come into the office, grab the scripts with his name on them and then walk out. And so by sitting at the front desk, I was meeting all of these actors which was really great. And a lot of them have gone on to amazing careers, but back then they were just coming to pick up scripts and get ready for their auditions. - The client list at that time at Paradigm and that sort of period of time of theater in New York was really amazing. - It was incredible. I loved it so much. I was not paid very much, but it was such a great experience. And by working at that office, I feel like it helps later the groundwork between that and all my children to leapfrog around New York City, not only finding jobs within the industry, but also narrowing in on what it is I wanted to do. Although I loved the people I was working with, I quickly realized that being a talent agent, I was not going to have any interest in. It just wasn't for me. I think being that type of advocate for actors, I just didn't see myself doing it. long-term. So I left there and said, "Winning tables for a little while at a couple of restaurants." But one of my roommates had a job at Manhattan Theatre Club. And this was audience services, but he was a company manager. And so he dealt with a lot of things like house seats and being at the theater at night and getting things up and running. And so his particular space was within the larger audience services department. And they were constantly looking for temp help. So I ended up going and tenting in that office for a little while. Then I went full-time and I was there for a couple of years. I did with the subscribers. And it was great. And again, it was such a good group of people there. We had a blast. My other roommates ended up working there as well. So we were just living and working together. The three of us. And it was so much fun. And then I started getting jobs at other off-broadway theaters doing primarily house management and box office type work. I worked at the vineyard theater. I worked at primary state. There's one I'm forgetting. But in addition to continuing my work at MTC. And so from there at MTC, I had met somebody in the casting department. I met a couple of people in the casting department, but their intern at the time was a man named Henry Russell Bergstein who went on to a wonderful casting career. But he and I stayed in touch. And a couple years later, I really started to look towards casting as something that I was really interested in. And you were doing it in New York. I had other friends who were doing it working on lawn order or lawn order special victims unit or some of the off-broadway theaters. And there was something about the creative aspect of casting also being able to be an advocate for actors. Odd, wonderful marriage of creativity and business that I really became very interested in. And so during my time with these off-broadway theaters, I would occasionally interview for a casting assistant job that would pop up in New York City. And this was back when New York City as a production hub was not what it is today. Yeah, it was. Obviously, there was fabulous theater going on. Yeah. But there were the soap operas were still happening. Yeah. And most of them are a lot of them were filmed in New York. I think we had spin city going. And that was like a huge deal. Yeah. Then otherwise it was lawn order. And the sopranos and that was it. Yeah, there was not this big industry. Whenever a television show would actually film in New York City, it was a big deal. Because for years, it was theater actors who sometimes have a day job on a soap. And that's how they would make their living. And pretty much all television was filming in out in LA. And the industry has changed through the years. But New York became a major production center for TV and film. They figured out their tax break. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That helped bring more production. After I first moved to LA, I got a job as a casting associate. And then we were doing a big daddy and I flew back to New York and got to work in New York. And that was like the coolest. I love my time in New York City going back to my story with Henry. Henry was the assistant at a lot of the major TV networks would actually have a New York outpost. And Henry was working with the cast and director named Meg Simon at Fox. The Fox network, kind of casting an office in New York. With the idea of all of these offices would basically cover the New York town pool for shows that primarily film in Los Angeles. And Henry was going back to grad school. You know, I wanted to get back into casting and some he recommended me to Meg. And I ended up getting the job as her assistant. And in less than a year, she ended up leaving Fox and going over to Warner Brothers. And that office was designed to be a three person office. So in that transition, I ended up getting a promotion to her associate. And that's how everything began. I started in Warner Brothers in August of 2002 in the New York office. And my job was to audition actors for any project Warner Brothers needed us to work on. Primarily pilots, occasionally we would work on guest star roles. If for instance, one of our shows was Culpe Case, which was on CBS. And that show was set in Philadelphia. And maybe twice a year, they would go out to Philly to do some location shooting. So if they needed guest cast, we would work on that for them. The West Wing was going at the time. And same thing, they would occasionally shoot in DC or in other places. And so we would help them with guest casting if they needed during that time. Was there for about three and a half years? And I turned 30. And I decided New York was not for me anymore. And I really wanted to expand my career to the next step, which meant coming to LA. So I'm done here in 2005. He missed me too much. That's why you. There is that as well. I know it's weird. Our friendship was like in this odd like bubble stasis for a while. We would see each other on holidays. But we just picked up exactly where we left off as soon as I came to LA. Which is amazing. I interned for Bonnie Finnegan. That was one of my first TV jobs in New York. And Bonnie oversaw the casting at the time for Paramount Studios. When Paramount Studios was what it was, whatever, 20 years ago. And those jobs were the best because you just got to see every single fan, fantastic New York actor. It was so great. And that was my day all day long. It was auditioning for projects. And when you- I think going and seeing them on stage at night. Exactly. It was great. And it really allowed us to have that relationship with the acting community and the agent community in New York because everything again, it's such a big industry and yet you end up knowing everybody else. There's so many difference between Los Angeles and New York. But LA is a one industry town. New York has many industries and really knew each other in New York in a different and more intimate way. And I think also because of the gatherings at theater. Yeah. That the- at live events theater and comedy, we would know everyone personally. It was a different experience. I don't know what it's like now. From what I hear from my New York colleagues, I think it is still that. Setting aside, obviously, the pandemic when people were not really seeing each other as much. But it's a very big, slash small industry in New York. And there was something that was so special about that that I miss. When I moved to LA, one of my biggest concerns or fears or challenges was knowing how massive the industry is out here and just thinking to myself, how am I going to know well the agents? How am I going to know everybody and all the actors? Because in New York, you feel like you have a pretty good handle on who's who? And of course, it's just something that you just immerse yourself in and then you figure out who's who out here. But- Yes. And then you also realize it is a small town out here too, you know- It is true. Everyone knows everyone from somewhere. Yep. You move to Los Angeles and then how did your cast and career take shape in LA? Originally, I had hoped since I loved Warner Brothers and I loved my department. I had hoped to just come out here and join their LA office. But at the time, they didn't have room for me. So I took a job with NBC who was looking at the time. So I moved out here in the fall of 2005 and started working for NBC, which was a really interesting experience for me. Not only does the job change because I was not auditioning actors anymore, I was actually overseeing the casting process on the various shows that I was assigned. So that was different in terms of my day to day. But working for a studio for so many years, it's one step closer to the creative process because we're the producers. We produce the show with the writer and the director. And so you really are on the ground floor of the creative process. Whereas the networks are one step removed because they're the buyers. By the time everything gets to the network for their final approval step, there's a lot that has happened behind the scenes. I came out here and my first pilot season, which was 2006, I was so used to being at the office until 11 o'clock at night. And just this is back when we had to like deal with VHS tapes of auditions and like back in the old days. I was out here and I was expecting to have a lot of late hours during pilot season. I was wrapping up by 7-7-30 and it was like, oh, okay, this is different. And it was a good experience, was good teaching experience. But I knew that my heart was back at the studio. So a couple of months after that, Warner Brothers did have an opening and I happened to be having dinner with my old boss from Warner Brothers just to catch up since I moved to LA and she had asked me if I would be interested in returning. And I was. I think I was at NBC maybe for eight months and then went back to Warner Brothers and started back there in May of 2006. And I've been there ever since. And what is your day? So it's I think it's probably easier for me to describe what it is I do because my day tends to be a little over the place. So as a casting executive at a studio, there is in my department, there is the head of casting who is Melanie Naglear right now who, who instantly I worked with at Manhattan Theatre Club back in the day. That's when she and I first met. And then right below her is myself and one two three four other executives who oversee the various projects that Warner Brothers television produces. So currently I'm overseeing about 12 or 13 projects. Nine of which are currently active and the others, some of which I've just wrapped or some wrapped a couple of months ago, we're waiting to see if they're going to do another season. When you're overseeing the casting of those shows, really it's your responsibility to make sure that I always like to say it's quality control. You want to make sure that the actors were showing up on set that you are casting on your show are the right ones. You want to make sure that everyone's making the right choices. You want to make sure that your network partners are aware of what's going on. So it's a lot of making sure that there's communication back and forth between the various departments. within the studio, making sure that business affairs and current programming and the head of the studio, making sure everybody knows what's going on at any given moment, and the same with your network partner. So most of the networks that I work with have their own cast of people. And so it's making sure that I'm informing them of what's going on or sending them auditions for approval. One thing that I do for the shows that I work on is read every script. For me, for my process, it helps me put what it is that I'm casting into context, whether it's a particular role or a particular storyline that is looking to cast certain roles. So a portion of every day for me is reading, it's script reading. And when you work on as many shows as I do, the script's time to come in a lot. That is part of it. And another great part of our job is just keeping our eyes open for talent. I don't want to call it talent scouting, but it is when you're watching a movie, when you're going to theater, when you're watching a TV show, if there's an actor that you're not familiar with, that there's something appealing about them where you realize I would love to put him or her television show. It's keeping that mental file on these actors that you see, that a lot of them are probably younger because that's why they're new to you. I, in my career, I've worked on a lot of young ensemble shows every year during what I refer to a showcase season, where kids are coming out of their schools, Carnegie Mellon and NYU, all of these schools that showcase in LA or New York or one of the helpful things about the pandemic is a lot of schools are doing virtual showcases now, which is great because I have access to all of these new students that might showcase in New York, but I would go to their first showcase, don't come to LA or they do come to LA, but I, for whatever reason, my schedule won't allow me to go to the showcase that day. It's really helpful to be able to have access to all of that. I love finding new young, exciting actors that seem to be right for the shows that I work on. So talk about your process. If you have a pilot, you're going to cast a pilot. Start with what your responsibilities would be. So the first thing that we do when a pilot comes up is to work with the producers in the studio to create the budget. So making sure that you're breaking down the script, making sure that you are budgeting certain roles for certain amounts of money that you will need to cast the caliber talent that you want. So deciding who's a series regular, who's going to be a recur. Correct. Yes. That goes into the budgeting as well. Exactly. When I worked on the original gossip girl, I read that script and realized quickly, I'm like, there are 14 major characters in here and I don't know that we can afford 14 series regulars. So some of them ended up becoming recurring characters, some of them stayed, some of them left, but there's a certain pool of money that you have to work with and it gets to the point where you have to start helping the producers make those decisions. Okay, which characters could you live without? Live without as a series regular. As a series regular, meaning that you cast them for the pilot. Maybe they stick around for first season, but then they may get their own pilot. So you have to be prepared for people to come and go. Once that's done and the pilot is officially greenlit and picked up, then the next stop is making sure that you are getting a casting director for the project. Well, casting directors, depending on where it's shooting. So if you, if I have a pilot that's shooting in Vancouver, I'm finding an LA casting team and I'm also finding a Vancouver casting team, or a land to casting team, if that's what it's filming, then once you have that in line, one moment. Sure. Who makes the final decision on who the casting director is? Pause that for a moment while the dogs come back in. Oh yeah, I was just just happening. I'm back. Welcome back, darling. Thank you. Where are we? Who makes the final decision on who the casting director is for a pilot? So ultimately, it's going to be the producers. I had a lot of the producers that I work with our season enough where they worked on other projects. I would say two thirds of the time they come into the process with a casting director or casting directors. In mind that they've worked with before that they have a shorthand with or they trust or sometimes it's just superstition. Last three shows that I worked with them got on the air so I'm going to keep using them. They're successful with me. And for the third that maybe either don't have a casting director that they've worked with before that they want to use for this particular project, or they do, but that casting director is not available, then we make the introductions to other casting people that hopefully they will form a new relationship. And it's usually people that for me, I'll speak for myself, usually because I'm covering these casting directors, I will recommend people that I've worked with before that I trust, or people that I feel like whether it's personality or the type of show that we're doing just feels like it might be a good fit. That's really important. There's so many really talented casting directors and part of the matchmaking process as a executive is if it's a new relationship knowing your producer showrunners personality who they're going to vibe with to is this someone who like wants to see a million people? Is this someone who needs a lot of handholding? Is this someone that's really decisive? It's also putting together the personalities. It really is matchmaking, that's what it is. So once you have the casting director in line, the studio and the network are on board with whoever it is we want to hire, then we get them started. And they begin their process, which tends to be very to start about casting directors asking the producers those things you just mentioned. How many actors do you want to see? How many do you want me to narrow down? Do you guys like to narrow down? Once we have a casting breakdown, which goes out to the aging community with what it is we're looking for. And we have audition sides in line. Then yeah, we're off to the races. And they start auditioning. That's a good point too. For the casting director is figuring out your process with the showrunner. Some showrunners want to see a million actors and some are like just bring me the top five. Exactly. And go from there. Okay, so let's say now in the pilot process we've narrowed down the casting director comes to you and says we love these three people. We love these five people. We love these six people that we want to test for this lead role. Yes. For the lead role of Diane. I just came up with that. Oh, bless. Complex character. Yes, complex. Lots of colors Diane has to give us. So they come to you and say we have these many people we're ready to test for the role of Diane. What do you do? What happens the next? So the next thing that we do is we put our business affairs team in touch with their agents because what we then need to do if it's somebody that is going to test for us is we have to put together what is called a test deal, which means that the agent and our business affairs negotiate pretty much all the terms. We have a contract that is signed by each of the actors auditioning. And then once they go through the process, whoever it is that the producers in the studio and the network all embrace for the role of Diane, we then have the deal in place. So we just have to exercise the pilot option within the deal and they are hired and then they come and do the pilot with us. So the gals that are auditioning for Diane. Yes. Have contracts that have been negotiated that figure out all their deal terms. They sign the contracts. They test at the studio. Yes. And right now I would imagine you're doing pilot tests on tape. Everything is digital. Yeah, everything is on tape and by tape on the computer box. But yes, it's all recorded and uploaded. We are still at this time not really doing in-person auditions, except for very specific instances. So five gals audition for Diane for the studio where every one at the studio, including the president of the studio, says we like these one, two, three people, however many they narrow down with the producer. Yes. These are the choices that we want to bring to the network. Correct. Yes. As a rule of thumb at the studio, we try not to have people, we try not to have more than five people testing for a role at the start. At the studio step. If you're seeing too many actors read this material, at some point you really just don't know what you're looking at anymore. We really like the producers to have a point into you and to be focused enough where they're saying these are our top choices. And by the way, if they want to test five women for the role of Diane, it's also entirely possible that one or two of those agents won't close a deal. So those people might go away and we're down to three. So we're sending our three Diane choices to the network. Yes. And it's going on tape. It goes on tape to the network. And then the network decides if they like any of them. Yeah. And if everyone can agree upon one. Yes. I would actually include the studio step with this. It is helpful for us if the producers come in with a point of view. Meaning here are three choices for Diane. We generally like all three, which is why we're actually testing because you producers should not ever test somebody that they wouldn't want to test. Yes. Because sometimes depending on who else is in the room with louder voices, it could be that they get stuck with some way that they may not have really embraced for the role. So assuming that they love all of their Diane choices, we like to hope that maybe they like one of them a little bit more than the others. And if that audition is solid and we're seeing what they're seeing, we like to go to the studio and to the network to say here are three choices or two choices for this role. Here's who we want to cast and this is why. So during the pandemic, I've also had to educate my producer. service because we're not all in a room together watching these things where we can have a conversation. Usually it's me sending a link to a website with auditions that have no context. So I advocate for the producers to actually write something up that I can include in my email as to who their top choices and why. So that if there is a discussion that's needed, there is at least some sort of context about it. That's, I'm so glad you brought up that point in the casting process and even as for you as a studio casting executive, you've heard these sides so many times. Yes. Which is what is making our Diane Choices really stand out for you as you've seen it so many times so you can speak to why this works or what this person did that really felt like your Diane for the role. Yes. When your studio executives are seeing it and then when the network sees it, there isn't the context of seeing lots of other reads. So part of the casting executive's job is to be able to frame the scene for their people, for their choice makers, be able to talk to why this person is so good and then also to have backup material on the actors take with other things if needed. Often when I was at the network, I would have an executive say, they were good, but I don't know if they can do X. So I love having done my research and having all the material is like, yes, they can take a look at this. Exactly. Yeah. And we found that for better or for worse, that's also become something that we have armed ourselves with for guest roles. Sometimes we'll send a guest role to a network which should be a much simpler process to approve. But you get a lot of questions and so by having a demo that can be sent with a demo material has been helpful. So much has changed during the pandemic because I think on the one hand, everybody who's watching our editions is somewhat more forgiving about the fact that, okay, this person is putting themselves on tape in their house with the dog barking, reading with his wife who's maybe an accountant and Mike. So there's so many things that are just like, okay, we just have to get through this and learn to extrapolate what we need from these auditions that maybe are not as effortless as it would have been if they were able to come into the casting director's office, which is a safe professional space, hopefully with somebody who knows how to read opposite them, not an accountant, yes, or their mother or whoever it is that is reading opposite these actors because it's today have access to. Yeah. Just think how taping everything has changed things because what occurred to me when you were sharing about taping all of the tests, when we were doing tests in person, when the actors would have to come in live, the producers could feel like, oh my gosh, I love Bachelor at number one for Diane, but then the dark horse would come in and actually win it in the room. So that piece is taken out of the audition process when you have the tape. That's really interesting. Yeah, you're we're all just watching the exact same performance that they have done. And by the way, hopefully the casting directors and the producers have curated the material that they're sending to me in such a way that they're bullet proofing it as much as possible. This actress has auditioned for Diane four times. She did her initial original tape. We gave her a call back with notes and she did a zoom with the director. There's a lot of steps before anything comes to us oftentimes. I have sometimes gotten material, a link with material where scene one is from the original audition because they just nailed it and they're not going to fuss with it. And scene two is the one they did with the director and scene three is maybe a chemistry read with a where somebody else is in a zoom box. They're so intense. They're hopefully not the accountant, but yeah, it's I think they're really trying to show in the best way they can when literally they're taking a link and putting it on an email and sending it off into the ether and hoping for the best and hoping making cast their show. So one of my jobs is to help them curate that material. I always watch things first before I send it around to my team to say, okay, this is great, but to have a maybe a different take of scene three or should we put scene three first? When this random link is going to all these people who are going to be helping making those decision, how do we get them to see what you guys are seeing your function in the testing process with your executives is very much like the casting director's function with their showrunner, which is to say looking at things and saying, I'm going to need a different color or they're not going to respond to this or they're going to love this. And very much a casting executives job is your party planner, your matchmaker, but you're also an advocate. So being able to look and inform the people that are putting the packages together help win the role for the actor to put the package together in the best way, knowing who your audience is at the network and who your people are at the studio. Exactly. And hopefully you've been working with these people enough where you can't read their mind and I've had so many times where I thought, okay, actor number one is definitely the choice. And everybody's like, you know, we're two is actually really interesting. And that happens. It happens for whatever reason. That happened actually in a pilot that I worked on last season, which we were casting in such a short period of time. It was a network pilot that the network picked it up way too late. We had four weeks to cast an ensemble project. And our casting directors were amazing. They were, they were working 24 hours a day, but they were amazing. And I would say within the first couple of days of them being hired, they came to us and said, we want to make an offer to this person for the lead. We want to test these two people for this other role. And they just were going going. There was one role in the supporting cast where they sent us two choices. We put test deals together in both. And the producers really loved actor number one. But there was something about actor number two that just popped in a different way. And she was much more interesting as opposed to like straight down the middle. Everyone just leaned into her. And we thought, okay, we hear you about the first choice. But I have to say we're loving the second choice. We said, but in the interest of fairness, let us send it to over to the network and get their take as well. So we sent both choices to the network. And they agreed. They're like, you know what actor number two is just there's something about her that's just more interesting. But the producers were like, okay, the reason we tested both is because we really do know that we preferred the other one. But if our studio and our buyer preferred the second choice, let's do that. Let's do it so that everybody is really embracing this project. Producers, I think, have to lock a fine line between advocating for what it is that they want for the show that they're creating their vision and what they create for their vision. But also not making their studio or network feel like they're jammed into choices that no one likes. So it is. And I think producers, some producers are excellent about not only reading the room, but also maybe compromising on some things. Maybe thinking okay, this was not my first choice, but everybody seems to be leaning into this other choice. Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. As opposed to having to be right 100% of the time. Because the one thing that networks will always do if somebody is not popping with the producers and system above them is to basically say, I told you. And it's, I don't blame them. It's a discussion to give back, which is we've heard it before. Do you want to make a series or do you want to make up exactly? Exactly. Yeah, I think if there is a way to have everybody feel like they've been heard, but also finding a way for everybody to embrace what it is we're doing, then everybody's rooting for it. They're rooting for the project or rooting for the actor. And so even if the actor maybe makes a couple of missteps, everyone has agreed at one point that this is who we are advocating for. This is who we cast. And let's at least get behind them to such a point where if it's really not working, then maybe a different decision has to be made. But at least there's enough goodwill behind that actor. We're all rooting for them to succeed. It's interesting to note too that this is for a pilot that you are casting reading for. They're also our pilots where listen like the showrunner will be so proven where the showrunner gets his or her choices no matter what which is hey, this is who we want. It's unusual and usually it's also if it's like an offer-only type situation pilot. It's a bad example. When Chuck Lurie is doing the Kaminsky method, he knows that he wants. He knows he wants those two leads, right? We're making these offers. We're making these deals now, it's a go and you're maybe reading a couple other roles. So they're all different ways that pilots can get cast. If you're doing a younger ensemble thing, then usually you're reading all of the roles. And on other pilots, you're making offers on some and reading others. But thank you so much for sharing that process because it's really intricate. There's so many different moving parts. It's people poker in a way. There's also when no matter what kind of office it doesn't have to be in the showbiz office, right? Like when to bring things up to your boss. How is the right way to have this conversation? How is the right way to frame something to move something forward? There's all of these different things to do. So it's the art and sort of the science of it. Yes, absolutely. So can you talk to us about a pilot table read? Have you have heard the stories before of actors getting replaced after the pilot table read? I've had to unfortunately replace actors from a pilot table read. And usually that's because it's just it's just not working. He had one occasion where the actor was rude and it was crazy. It was so rude and terrible like to the showrunner and everyone at the table read that everyone's went, I can't make a pilot with this energy and this person. That's once in in my casting career. But talk about the pilot table read process. What are just good rules of thumbs? What should a new actor who's never read it a pilot table read? No. It's such a good question. I feel like it's not talked about enough. Fortunately, a couple of things I will say about table reads. When you are doing a comedy table read, what you're trying to get a sense of is the chemistry, the potential chemistry among the cast, obviously whether the jokes work because if you're doing the table read and some jokes are not landing, writers are taking notes about that because that will probably be adjusted in the next step. But you just want to have a good time. You want to just see what this, see how this sounds when it's being read. I love comedy's able reads. I think that they're a blast. I think actors have fun doing them. And if something is really not working, then yes, occasionally there's a discussion among the producers and the studio on the network to say, okay, before we actually get this thing on its feet, do we need to make a change? And unfortunately, that is based on one performance. One performance at a table read, it feels wildly unfair and sometimes it is that some people just have one shot at this. But I think people are spending a lot of money to make a potential hit series and they want to make sure that they're doing it right. Important thing to note too is if something is quote unquote not working, if someone is not working a role, there's a discussion. Yes, I have not seen it where they're like, it didn't work at the matter here. It's usually this isn't working. Here are concerns. Let's talk about it. And sometimes a showrunner can advocate for them and say, no, I've seen it. I've seen it or the studio can do the same thing or other times it'll be like, oh, yeah, it isn't working. We agree. I worked on a pilot once where it was a law show in ensemble with a singular lead, not saying it really is not. It was a gentleman. I won't mention his name, but he has an Oscar. We did the table read. And now, by the way, this is what you know about a drama table reads, which is its own separate cumversome animal. Drama table reads are hard because a lot of times there's a lot of stage direction, I guess, is the word where you have to read. And so there's a lot being read by your line producer, or maybe one of the writers, or an assistant, or where it's just all expedition. And this car is going fast and it's catching up to this car. And actors are just sitting there and just waiting for their lines. But you have to visualize what's going on. And you also have to include it because during table reads, they're also trying to time it. So that when it's up on its feet, if you're trying to get a 42 minute drama pilot, you don't want it to tie it out to 59 minutes. Otherwise, things are going to get cut. But it can be a killer because it's just all of this. Either you have somebody that's very enthusiastic about reading the stage directions, or you have somebody that's just reading them to get them done. And it just sucks the air in the room a lot of the time. But with dramas, I think actors sometimes go into it wanting to find the nuance of the quiet moments with their characters. And what they don't realize that I think needs to be talked about a lot more is that the table read should be its own separate thing where you do have to perform in a way, almost maybe a little bit like theater, where you have to perform in a way that is not necessarily how you're going to do it on set. If you are on a drama table read and you are filming your pilot in Atlanta, and there's a lot of executives watching in the room in Los Angeles, via some sort of camera zoom situation. And you're trying to get the whole cast into the frame and you can't really see anybody. It's rough because all of the sudden people are starting to make decisions of your performance based on what you did or did not do during a table read that they can maybe can't see or hear. And you might be losing your job in this discussion. So we had this pilot with the Oscar winner. And after the table read was done, a lot of executives and this was filming in New York, but we were all in California, started to have a discussion about replacing set Oscar winner based on the table read. We ultimately didn't use ultimately fine in the project, which did not get picked up to series. I don't think that was his fault. But it's crazy to think that anybody really can be how much I can block the discussion veered towards we know this person's level of talent. We know that maybe what he was doing at the table read felt a little bizarre or maybe not enough at some point and maybe too much at some point. But we know his level of talent. We have a great director. So let's make sure the director understands the notes. And then those are there are times where you find out that the actors and the producers and the director didn't do any kind of table read rehearsal. Yes, we would always ask for a table read rehearsal that's the best way to fool proof it. You can calibrate the performances, but so I was laughing so hard I had to get off of the mic when you were talking about the person that reads stage directions at dramas. I don't know how many drama pilot table reads I was at where I don't know it would be the second AD or something who just did not have a gift for presenting stage directions. Yes. And you would just say within the first half page, oh fuck. So it would be so important to be able to figure out what stage directions are actually important to be read. And we don't have to read every last line and to keep the energy going. And as you said, like the performances, it's really important to have a rehearsal to try to figure out all those kinks. And what also people don't realize is that a lot of the times these table reads are the first time the cast is together. It's so to do a rehearsal, to work those things out, to make sure that act number one, act number two, we're in this very important scene, or maybe sitting next to each other or at least being able to bounce off of each other. It's like with anything. Sometimes you need a rehearsal. Yep. Before you're showing it to people. That's why I prefer when doing younger casts, testing in person, because one of the other things that would happen is the actors would be in the same room together when they were waiting to come in. They were already getting to know each other and building rapport. And then at the table read was like, Hey, congratulations. You got it. All those little pieces would help build some chemistry and some comfortability with our younger casts. Yes. It's all relationships, baby. It's true. It's true. And if your show is successful, hopefully no room for a number of years need this coron sample be together for a long time. So, John, I have collected a lot of questions from actors. And I want to ask you some. Sure. What is the process for casting a TV family? Have you had to cast TV families before? Oh, yes. Okay. Great. So, what is the process for casting a TV family? Do you normally cast the main character than everyone else off of that one character? How important is it to have the family look similar or related? There's a couple. There's a couple of topics within this one question. So, talk about your process first. In terms of casting a family, yes. I think it needs to start with somebody, some person. And maybe that character is more of a central character within this family. So, I'm trying to think of examples of when I've done this. I worked on a show a number of years ago for ABC called the middle, which was they had done a pilot, which I didn't cover. It was about a lower middle class family and kind of the challenges they had with them that well in Indiana. So, they did pilot with Ricky Lake. It was about her husband and her three kids. But pilots didn't really work, but there was something about the project that people really were sparking too. So, they decided to redevelop it a little bit. We attached Patricia Heaton, who had recently come off with her great-life statement. So, she was available looking for her next thing. They attached her to it. And ABC decided to do it again. And so, we had our central character. And so, now it's time to cast her around her. There was one actor, Atticus Schaefer, who played the youngest kid in the original pilot with Ricky. He was the only holder from the original cast. So, he ended up playing that role again in the pilot. But we had to recast the husband, because Patty was a little bit older than Ricky's. So, the husband had to age up as well. So, we hired Neil Flynn, who tested. I don't remember who he tested opposite, but he tested and was great. And then we hired Charlie McDermott and Ethan Cher, as they were two kids. And your casting process, casting directors are seeing everything all at once. So, you may concentrate on the lead first. But once you have that piece, even if not locked down, but in a direction of being locked down, you're auditioning everything else. So, sometimes it just depends on what you're ready for. Okay, we've got our lead character, and we're auditioning for all of these other roles, but you know, what we found some great choices for the oldest son. So, let's do that next. Because when you're casting a pilot, you also don't want to lose your favorite choices to other projects that are casting at the same time. So, sometimes you just got to know, you just got to come in with what you have ready and hopefully the past and in regards to Does a family do they need to look alike? Do they need to in my experience? That is probably the last concern work on Superman and Lois for the CW. And when we were casting that show, we had Tyler Hecklin and Betsy Tullac who had already played Superman and Lois on other CW shows. So they were attached to the project, but we had to cast teen twins on Spreda. The two actors we hired could not have looked more dissimilar from each other, even though they're supposed to be twins. And frankly, it never came up. No one really talked about, did they really look like twins? I don't think anybody really cared because we wanted the best actors. These days, we're more sensitive to and it also presents a special set of challenges. If you're casting actors that have a specific background or ethnicity, you want to be authentic when you're casting around them with their family members. So if your lead is Japanese, for instance, you don't want to cast her mother as with a Korean actress. We want to really celebrate the diverse backgrounds of not only these actors, but these characters trying to be as authentic as possible when you're casting around them is something that I think people are paying more attention to than they did back when I started. We're not necessarily looking for just if you're casting a family, we're not going to describe the family as Asian. And by the way, I'm also hoping that the script that we are reading is speaking to a specific background and experience so that we are casting what it is that they're writing. You look at real families in the world and people look different. Absolutely. The siblings look different. I had to cast lots of families and there were people that would look wildly different, but they made sense. They felt like a family. I think it's more about the feel of how everyone feels together with the chemistry is then this one is blue eyes and that one has brown eyes, which by the way is me and all of my siblings. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I just think that if people are enjoying the show, they really don't think about that kind of thing as opposed to like, why aren't all these siblings blonde? Maybe they're not all blonde in real life. Yeah, I think that a lot of times when you look at your friends and their family is like, yes, everybody does look a little bit different, but you can see, okay, I get genetically how you people are related. And I don't think that really comes up in television. John, what makes you remember an actor? Specifically for auditions. So you're watching an audition tape. You're like, not right for this, but I love them. This is a person I'm going to remember. What is it? Can you define what you're paying attention to? Yeah, it's so funny. When you first asked that question, I thought you meant in general, in which case, my answer would have been most usually a performance. It's a performance that I've seen, whether it's on stage or on television or in a movie where I connected with it so much that remember this actor forever. But in auditions, that's a different thing. And this is what I can't really put my finger on when it comes to auditioning for a specific role. If I'm looking at a hundred actors auditioning, the ones that I will remember are the ones that connect with the material in a very special and non-specific way that you can't really describe that more so than the other actors who you've seen audition for it. There's a chemistry between actor and words that is indefinable. I wish that there was like a magic answer, but there's really not. It's just sometimes there's an actor that comes in reading for a specific role. That is just, it's just much more powerful than everybody else that's auditioning. So this actor asks that same question three different times because here's the other two questions. So what makes you remember an actor? What distinguishes a good audition from a great audition? And what grabs your eye the most in the self-tape or in-person call? It's all the same question. It is, but I think there's a nuance because at least with the second question, I feel like there's an answer I can give that I didn't touch upon before. So what can distinguish between a good and a great audition? I'm going to give the advice I've given for the 20 years of my career. When you're an actor that's auditioning for something, your best tool to be able to really land that audition is to know the material. I always say that you don't necessarily have to be off the book. I have auditioned several actors in the past who are so good at auditioning that they've, they're familiar with the material and they may have to glance down occasionally to just remind themselves where they are on the scene, but it's not noticeable. So it's this like magic about auditioning. If you are off book, then what you're able to do if you're not looking at a page is you're able to look at the person reading with you. So there's a connection that you're able to establish with your reader that allows you to really perform as opposed to just read. Be in the moment in Christine with the scene partner. And in this day and age, sometimes auditions happen very quickly or sometimes you're auditioning for a role in the casting directors. Like, yeah, that's not working, but I have this other role that I think you would be amazing and say, hand you the science quickly and you have to quickly pull it together for a cold reading. And again, if you're an actor that is skilled enough to be able to, I don't want to use the word memorize, but become familiar with the material enough. We're just glancing down occasionally at the page, but like you're really in the scene, then that's what will put you ahead and shoulders above everybody else who maybe is not as prepared. Also, I think auditioning, it makes people nervous. Actors that have been working professionally for years and years, there are something that get nervous doing auditions. I think a way to combat those nerves is to know the material. Because I think the nerves, it's not about thinking that you're not a good actor. I think that if you're doing this for a living, I think there's enough ego there that feels like you can be working. I think the nervousness comes from I'm going to go up on a line. This is going to suck. This is going to be terrible. So I think by knowing it, that's the biggest tool that you can give yourself. I love that explanation. I would also add that as casting folks, if you are so in a scene and then you happen to go up on a line, we get it. We know it. Take the breath, get yourself situated again and keep going with the scene. It's, it happens, but what we're paying attention to is where you really were when you were connected, not that you went up on a line. I expect you to be off book if this is your seventh audition. And this has been a three week process. But for a first audition, a pre read or a cold read with new material, I want you to have read it, made some decisions. Yeah, always say metabolize it a little bit and then do the scene. I'm not paying attention to they forgot the word. Right. Yeah. If there is a mistake or a stumble, as long as you stay in the scene, it is completely forgivable. You don't want to stumble and then completely lose it. And then say you're two thirds of the way through the scene and you stumble over a word and then, you know, this is something that we hate. And then ask to start again. Yeah, that's a pet peeve. So it's better to just get through it because you do you want to keep the agency of the character that you're playing. So you don't want to just stop and take yourself out of it and you want to stay in it. That's the best thing you can do for yourself. Stay in it. But take the time you need. Take a breath. Don't give a lot of words and fumping for apology. It's okay. You're not the first actor to ever go up on a line. Take a breath. Stay in the scene and then continue with it. And also one kind of caveat I'll put on this as well is that we are now in a time when your audition is between you and your camera and whoever's reading with you. And you can do it at 1 a.m. if you want to as long as you're getting it to the casting director when they need it, you can do it whenever you want. You can do it 17 times if you want. We're not going to know and we don't care. So if you find that you're going up on a line and you need to redo it or you need to say to yourself, okay, I'm just for whatever reason this line is not coming to me when it needs to. So let me take another half hour and go through this material again. Actors now have a wonderful luxury to be able to get the best version of their audition and send it in as opposed to you have five minutes in front of a casting director. They are backed up with their session. So we don't have time to go through this six times. You need to come in and they let me. Luckily, we don't have to deal with that at this moment or maybe ever again. I'm not really sure. Well, this is going to take shape as we go. That advice was really more for when you're doing a reading person or a live zoom read because there's still additions where you're on with the casting director you're on with the studio live. Yes, although even that's I have to say in my experience that's even rare. You're probably doing it live with your producers and your director and your casting director is that's the safe space version where these are the people that you're in the final stages of these callbacks. And they want you to win. They want you to succeed. So they will take the time. But I haven't had to do a live even on zoom a live audition. I can't think of one time if I had to do it during the pandemic. I'm sure people have had to do it. But yeah, we're what we're really doing right now is again curating the best version of the show. of what it is that we want to present. Yeah, look, someday maybe people go back to in-person auditions as a general rule, as opposed to a special occasion. I just don't know. I don't know what that's going to be. I think a lot of casting directors have found that being able to have actors tape on their own time and send it in is not only beneficial to the actor because the actors are being able to present their best work when they send it in, but it's also beneficial to the casting director because rather than knowing, okay, I have time to do a session for this one project between 130 and 3PM, which means I can proceed 12 actors. Now you can see 50 actors if you want. And because-- You have that 130 to 3PM to watch tapes. Exactly, exactly. Does the number, I love this question for a studio executive? Does the number of followers an actor have impact odds of getting a job and then there's a mojivomit face actor? The short answer is no, it doesn't, but there's a little bit of nuance within there. I will say I've had a lot of agents pitch. So-and-so has 2 million Instagram followers. And but if they're not talented, then what's the point? So you can maybe use that. I worked on the show a couple of years ago. Remember Vine? I was never on Vine. The Vine was a thing. The Vine's where you put some up and it was like, how did it work? It was like on a Vine. 18 seconds or so. Yeah. And there were a lot of people who were like popular people. You sound 80 years old right now. Not too. It's OK. Because by the way, Vine is now 80 years old. Because no way is on it anymore. Anyway, we would get all these pitches. So-and-so is big on Vine. They've got 2.6 million Vine, so whatever it was. And I would be like, OK, so I had a show that was having a little trouble in the ratings. It was a show that was off to a good start and then started to falter. So everybody decided, why don't we get people that have a social media presence to guess star on the show? Because then all of their Vines will tune in and watch out. And that's 2.6 million new viewers. It's not really how it works. So we had some sort of Vine person come on. And it was a small role. It was like one scene, co-star type role. I don't even think this person auditioned. It was just like, let's just hire them. And they did. They got the words out and were fine. But it didn't translate into massive ratings because this Vine person was on my show. I never does. It doesn't. It's-- yeah. Unless you have a very specific piece of quote unquote stunt casting, stunt casting is a lazy way for networks to try and goose the ratings of their show. Suncasting does not work unless it's an event. If Brad Pitt is going to come and be on friends with his girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston, then sure, that will work. But also that work 15 years ago. Even now, it doesn't necessarily translate. It doesn't at all. Into end with social media, the most famous people, the most famous TV and movie stars are accessible. When the business was such where we didn't know what Reese, whether Spoon's Kitchen looked like and what was going on and what her day to day was, it felt like a privilege to be able to watch her on a show. Now we have access to that in a different way. So it doesn't translate. Michael Testa, when I interviewed him, was sharing-- we put two of the biggest social media stars at the time on a show, didn't translate into viewers. But you're right. That was the network executive going, this will help goose the ratings. It doesn't. If the story is an authentic, if the characters are not fleshed out, if you do not have a good performer, then it doesn't matter. Exactly. It doesn't matter. And it makes all of our casting lives miserable. I think in the rare case where, let's say, someone has a big social media following and they're testing against someone for a role in a pilot and the performances are exactly the same, which by the way, never ever happens. But for argument's sake, let's say they were. That might be a talking point for the decision makers. But I have never seen it work. And usually the folks that we have been asked to give opportunities to off of social media if they have not worked on the craft of acting, then it doesn't work. And also when you really do a deep dive into it, if somebody has that much of a social media following, then what they have is a brand. So they're not also going to necessarily take the time to talk about the show that we're casting them on, nonstop, because they may be promoting their makeup liner. They may be promoting their red carpet on. So it's it doesn't always. They more money with their brand than they are on a $5,000 guest star. Absolutely. In fact, when all of the agencies started signing like YouTubers and liners and all those people, we had to sit down with some of them. Oftentimes we're like nice people, but wouldn't it's like, okay, what do you want to do? William Morrison Devar wanted me to sit down with you. So are you looking to your television show? They basically would like laugh and say, I make too much money and I need to host something three times a day. That's my full time job. Occasionally, you would have somebody that was using their social media explosion as a way to segue into an acting career, but most of them were making so much money. And I think agencies were trying to monetize that. I'm not really sure if they were able to make them with like grand endorsements or something, but as far as acting goes, it was not. I don't think it was lucrative for them. Yeah. This is interesting. Can you talk about the process and struggles of introducing, suggesting pushing for actors of color/diversity for roles that are not initially written as or looking to be cast as diverse? So my answer to that is twofold. The first is I, we actually don't like to do it. I'm going to spell it on that answer. We like that to happen at the script stage. We don't want casting to have to be the bandaid to fix inclusion. We talk about this all the time. For years, networks were pushing for more inclusive casts, but these shows were written primarily by white people who did not know how to write towards those voices. So we spent years having this conversation with our development teams to say we need there to be inclusion that's built into those fabric of the show. By the way, if you're doing a guest star and the guest star is the doctor, yes, then that's something where it's like we can cast anybody as that. And so we do stand on top of making sure that our cast does feel inclusive within the guest cast. I think it's an interesting question for 2022 as well because most studios have realized that. By and large, I would venture to say networks are not picking up a lion's share of shows. It's all white people anymore. It's just not happening. It has to be in this backstage. Absolutely. I don't think they have interest in it. I work on All-American and All-American Homecoming, which are predominantly black cast. There are other people within those ensembles All-American have, but it's a black creator. And I think that having her tell the stories of these characters every week, it is able to lend an authenticity to it. And not to say that you can't have a showrunner who's white, but then your writer's room needs to have those voices. Like you all need to be able to just make sure that what you're doing has an authenticity to it for those actors, for those characters. And I think by and large, it is so much better than it was five years ago, even. I think there's still work to do. And I think there are spaces that still have challenges. One for me that I think about a lot is actors with disabilities or are differently able. I think that there's not enough inclusion in that area yet. That's one thing that I feel like still needs work. But yeah, luckily I have not had to have the conversation about inclusion with my producers, the major conversations in a bit. It's really interesting that you use the word band aid. I think that is really smart. There's a difference in the casting process, as you stated, of looking for casting to be a band aid to an issue and to a lack of diversity, then casting director making a creative choice on a role. But I think the band aid is a really smart way to talk about it. Yeah, yeah. And luckily we don't have to use the band aids as often as we used to. Yes, yes. Five years ago, ten years ago, that was a really big deal. Okay, two more are you ready? Yes. I could not answer this question. I'm curious if you can. Do you have a favorite project that you've cast? And it doesn't have to be TV. It's actually a hard to narrow down to one. Gosh, okay. I always joke that the project that is my favorite is the one that's giving me the least amount of trouble. But in looking at the 20 years that I've worked in casting, I have a couple different answers but I'm going to go with the answer. The first show that I got to run point on casting is when I joined the New York office of Warner Brothers and makes I've been and I had gone from a relatively small-ish office that worked on a handful of projects to Warner Brothers which had such a volume business where when we started, we had to hit the ground running and so we had a lot of pilots that we had to do. So the way that Megan and I started was we split up projects. So she would work on certain ones, I would work on certain ones just to make sure that we were overseeing the workload. And at the time, this was back with the WB and UPN we're around before the CW. There was a show that was basically based on the Tarzan story. But it was set in modern times and Jane was a New York City cop and Tarzan lived in Central part. It was weird. I don't even remember how I got there. But that was one of the projects that I was overseeing. I don't know how we're not there. Or why he was living in trees and such. A baby was raised by Central Park Wolves. You said that. You said that. Or Central Park Jogger is, I don't even know. It was just so bizarre. But anyway, it was twofold in terms of my excitement for getting to work on this. The first is it's the first project that I was able to literally go through submissions, call it who I wanted to see, and having my own agency over my job for the first time, it felt rather than necessarily working for someone. I was given my own responsibilities. And that will always stay with me because the project was so dumb. But also it was the first time I got to do it. And then the second part of it is actually I was able to help cast the role of Jane, who was played by Sarah Wayne Callies, who went on to the lot of dead and a bunch of other things. She had just gotten out of grad school with one of my best friends. So I was friendly with her. And we had her come into audition. And all the sudden people were like, I think she's it. So they wanted to test her. But because she had just come out of grad school, she was a little reticent about doing this. By the way, she was right. But because I knew her a little bit, I was able to not talk her into it, but I was able to have conversations with her one-on-one about the project and about what are the pros and cons of being able to do this. And I think to a good end of this story, she ended up doing it, getting cast. She went to go do the show. It was her first kind of big on-camera experience. It was canceled after 13 episodes. This was terrible. And she then went on to bigger and better. Didn't she do prison break right after that? She did. That's right. That's a super hot show at the time. That's a hot show. So she did prison breaks and then walking dead. And so yeah, she's she's had a really good career. But this was her kind of first postgraduate school step. And I understand the redness. Because when you're just out of grad school and your entire career is in front of you, it's like, I want to play cop Jane in Tarzan set in New York City. Probably not. But she did. She sure did. She got the experience. She did. Yes, and got paid. And yeah, I'm sorry. I said, hey, if you can cash the check, it's a good job. So here's what here's the last question. Yes. What's the best thing that's happened to you this week? Oh, we like, what has made you happy this week? We talked about my sabbatical. I'm going to target this afternoon. That's always a good time. No, the best thing that's happened to me this week, which hasn't quite happened yet is I'm very excited to take a couple weeks and go on a bit of a trip. So I'm going to go back east and see friends and family and then take the train back across the country. And I'm taking the exact same thing, the America Express across the country. And I'm so excited. And I think this is a whole other podcast topic, but I think so many of us have still not gotten our grounded on the shifting sands that is the pandemic. And I feel like being able to take a month to just decompress and take some time for myself because working from home has been wonderful, but it's also often very confusing as to where does my job stop and where does my home begin. And so it'll be nice to just be able to step away for a little while and do some traveling. So that's the best thing that's going to happen this week when I leave on Sunday. I love it. And it's so interesting you say shifting sands because that's what it feels like in the industry right now. There's not so much change between streaming between all of the big corporations taking over smaller corporations. Yes, and with the pandemic, it's been, we're still in a little bit of an uncertain time. Absolutely. I think the past three years have been one thing after the next. And I think we're all just waiting for the America round to stop for a minute. That's the challenge is you have to be able to go on and live your life and live your best life when things still are figuring out what normal is. Yeah. John, thank you so much for your time. It was my pleasure. I'm going to hang up this call and then I have a story for you. Okay, perfect. Okay. See, we're going to hang up. Okay. I am so grateful to John for sharing some sabbatical time with me. I hope you have a delightful day today and share the love. Tell someone that you appreciate them. Tell them you're glad they exist. Thanks for listening. Please share this podcast on your socials and with any artists you think would dig it and send me your questions. I have many more casting folks coming in to share with you all. See you next time.