{"id":730504,"date":"2026-05-30T18:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T15:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-tvs-top-casting-directors-are-betting-on-unknowns\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T18:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T15:35:12","slug":"why-tvs-top-casting-directors-are-betting-on-unknowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-tvs-top-casting-directors-are-betting-on-unknowns\/","title":{"rendered":"Why TV\u2019s Top Casting Directors Are Betting on Unknowns"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tIn the age of social media<\/a>, casting directors still have managed to find industry newcomers with relative digital obscurity and turn them into bona fide stars overnight.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to see new actors that you haven\u2019t necessarily seen before,\u201d says Lucy Bevan, who teamed with Emily Brockmann for the second time (the first was on Game<\/a> of Thrones<\/em>) to cast A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms<\/em>. \u201cAs an audience member, you feel like you are discovering them for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are few shows that have been as successful in introducing new faces as HBO\u2019s medical marvel The Pitt<\/em>. In what they described as \u201cthe great experiment,\u201d because of the show\u2019s unprecedented single-shift format, casting directors Cathy Sandrich Gelfond and Erica Berger \u2014 who won an Emmy for their work on season one \u2014 were given carte blanche to cast more than 250 roles in the fictional Pittsburgh ER.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEverybody across the board said, \u2018Just find the best possible actors for these parts,\u2019 and that\u2019s a casting director\u2019s dream come true,\u201d Berger says. Given the show\u2019s immersive, 360-degree shooting style, the casting directors prioritized theater performers who could move seamlessly between the background and foreground of a scene. Adds Sandrich Gelfond: \u201cWe needed people who were fast on their feet because of the intensity. We don\u2019t have marks, so there\u2019s a lot of movement all the time; you have to be very\u202fnimble.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven with a proof of concept, Sandrich Gelfond admits that casting the second shift, which also featured more than 250 parts, was no less intense. For any given role, Berger estimates that their team receives between 2,000 and 5,000 submitted headshots and r\u00e9sum\u00e9s. They ask at least 40 actors to submit self-tapes for a guest-starring role \u2014 and significantly more for recurring and series<\/a> regular parts \u2014 and then they send five to seven tapes for producers to review for further callbacks, either via Zoom or in person in executive producer John Wells\u2019 office.<\/p>\n

\n\tCourtney Bright and Nicole Daniels went through a similarly exhaustive process to find the linchpin in Ryan Murphy\u2019s latest FX anthology, Love Story<\/em>: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette<\/em>. For months, the casting directors pored over hundreds of tapes and scoured social media and talent agencies to find their version of the Kennedy scion. \u201cHe had to be a man that every woman would fall in love with and every guy would want to be friends with,\u201d Daniels recalls of the character breakdown.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were looking for someone not overly worked-out, not overly manscaped \u2014 just somebody who was naturally masculine with hair on their chest and a physique of natural muscles,\u201d Bright adds. That kind of natural masculinity, as it turns out, is hard to find nowadays. It wasn\u2019t until three weeks before the start of filming in New York City that producers selected Paul Anthony Kelly \u2014 a Canadian model with little to no professional acting experience \u2014 to play JFK Jr.<\/p>\n

\n\tChest hair aside, what sealed the deal was Kelly\u2019s \u201cclear\u201d connection with Sarah Pidgeon, who already had landed the role of Carolyn, which extended off the screen after their swoonworthy chemistry read. \u201cPaul had a car, but Sarah didn\u2019t have a car, and we heard that he was going to give her a ride home rather than her taking an Uber,\u201d Daniels recalls. \u201cCourtney and I were both like, \u2018Oh, OK, we got\u202fhim.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat Kelly was completely unknown to audiences likely has allowed viewers to fully buy into the allure of this retelling of the Kennedy-Bessette love story, Bright notes. \u201cWhen you come in and have no expectations of what you\u2019re going to see, as an audience member you just get to dive deeper into it than you normally would, [especially] when you get an actor who is portraying somebody so famous with so much history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChemistry between co-leads certainly was top of mind for Bevan and Brockmann, who, in casting HBO\u2019s second GoT<\/em> prequel, were encouraged to cast a wide net to find newcomers to star as Ser Duncan \u201cDunk\u201d the Tall and his squire, Prince Aegon \u201cEgg\u201d Targaryen. Per George R.R. Martin\u2019s novellas, \u201cDunk had to be just shy of 7 feet and Egg is a child,\u201d Bevan notes. But besides the physical parameters, Peter Claffey and Dexter Ansell were able to capture the irreverent, comedic tone of showrunner Ira Parker\u2019s script<\/a>s.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tPeter Claffey (left) and Dexter Ansell as Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Prince Aegon Targaryen in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSteffan Hill\/HBO<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tNot unlike their characters\u2019 personalities \u2014 Claffey captured Dunk\u2019s charming and guileless nature while being \u201cconsistently always out of his depth,\u201d and Ansell innately has \u201ca natural superiority and a princely nature,\u201d Brockmann says \u2014 the actors quickly took to each other. \u201cWe tried to encourage them to spend a little bit of time just chatting before they came in [to read together],\u201d Brockmann adds. \u201cPeter said, \u2018Dexter seemed like such a pro. He was really composed and together.\u2019 Peter was intimidated by this tiny 9-year-old!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLong before they read for a part in front of producers and executives, an actor will spend weeks, if not months, working with a casting director to fine-tune their performance. \u201cWhen you are casting newcomers, you don\u2019t cast the person you meet on the first day. You cast the actor that they become through the help of directing them and guiding them,\u201d Bevan notes.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinding a crop of lesser-known actors who can improv is a fundamental requirement of Prime Video\u2019s hidden-camera reality sitcom Jury Duty<\/em>. While this season\u2019s Company Retreat <\/em>setting allowed casting director Susie Farris to find actors tailored to specific parts, she and her team still reviewed thousands of self-tapes where actors were asked to tell a story in less than two minutes.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tThe cast of Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcourtesy of Amazon Content Services LLC<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe most compelling \u2014 yet least recognizable \u2014 actors were called back for a staged focus group of 10 to 12 people. Tasked with a couple of prompts, they were observed to see how they would perform under pressure alongside unsuspecting participants who believed the research study was genuine. \u201cThe non-actors are not aware there are actors present; the actors are not told who the non-actors are,\u201d says executive producer Nicholas Hatton of the callbacks. Upon being cast, the actors were given only a month to learn their own fake life and the history they share with other characters at the fictional mom-and-pop hot sauce business Rockin\u2019 Grandma\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\n\tFarris points out that the mandate of finding lower-profile actors doesn\u2019t apply to just younger thespians. In fact, casting directors relish the opportunity to connect veteran Broadway and West End performers to a wider TV audience. While Sandrich Gelfond says her creative team has \u201ca running list of bigger people\u201d who want to be on The\u202fPitt<\/em>, she believes the show\u2019s \u201csecret sauce\u201d is \u201cthat we don\u2019t hire people who have strong associations\u201d with a particular character. \u201cWe\u2019ve been very careful, by and large, to not hire people that we know strongly from recent medical shows,\u201d she explains. \u201cWe stayed away from that very much the first season, in that we wanted to create a unique hospital environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Loren Escandon, Meta Golding and Supriya Ganesh in The Pitt.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarrick Page\/HBO<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tStill, there have been occasional opportunities to sneak in some bigger names. Mary McCormack, who played a doctor at a refugee clinic opposite Noah Wyle in ER<\/em>, scrubbed back in for The Pitt<\/em> as its chief of neurosurgery; Dann Florek as an elderly man who accidentally ran over his wife; Jeff Kober as motorcycle engineer Duke Ekins; and Rusty Schwimmer as hospital clerk Monica Peters. \u201cIt\u2019s all these people that people love that they haven\u2019t seen in a while,\u201d Sandrich Gelfond says, \u201cor they\u2019re just happy to see\u202fthem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the age of social media, casting directors still have managed to find industry newcomers with relative digital obscurity and turn them into bona fide stars overnight. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting to see new actors that you haven\u2019t necessarily seen before,\u201d says Lucy Bevan, who teamed with Emily Brockmann for the second time (the first was on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":730505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WP_105_01024r-H-2026.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[151211,5519,22333,162523,128102,95419,149486],"class_list":["post-730504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-a-knight-of-the-seven-kingdoms","tag-awards","tag-emmy-awards","tag-emmys-2026","tag-jury-duty","tag-love-story","tag-the-pitt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}