New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Casting director:
Movies in state will continue to boom; ‘keep your eyes out’ for roles
From a thriller movie starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain to a parade of Christmas films, Connecticut has been a filming destination this spring and summer. And when it comes to casting for these films, one New York City agency has worked to find many of the local faces appearing in the projects.
Angela Citrola is the owner and casting director at Citrola Casting, LLC., a casting agency that works to find both principal actors and extras for film, television and other commercial projects. While Citrola said she casts for projects all around the country, she has seen a significant rise in filming in Connecticut.
“We started out as a New York company, and we still work in New York, but for some reason we’ve become the go-to [agency] for Connecticut,” she said.
The agency has casted extras for such films as Netflix’s “The Good Nurse,” which filmed in Stamford, as well as the streaming platform’s “The Noel Diary” featuring Justin Hartley, which filmed up and down the Connecticut shoreline. It also casted for Hallmark movie, “Sand Dollar Cove,” a project that used Mystic, Stonington and Noank as its backdrop and gave its main character a job as a Stamford real estate developer.
For Citrola, Connecticut’s increasing use in movies is twofold.
“Connecticut has a really great tax incentive, and I think a lot of productions are taking advantage of that ability to save a couple bucks,” she said. “I also think there’s so much production in New York right now and in New Jersey that you’re seeing such an overflow — there’s not enough space…I think Connecticut is kind of getting the outliers or whatever there isn’t space for in New York at the moment.”
With this influx of filming projects comes a high volume of people to cast. In the past year, Citrola said her agency has cast around 2,000 people for Connecticut projects — that’s out of “close to 15,000 to 20,000 submissions between all of the projects.”
Citing an abundance of streaming services providing athome entertainment — especially during the COVID-19 pandemic — for the flood of filming, Citrola said the past year has been unexpectedly active at her agency.
“This is definitely the busiest year we’ve ever had, which really wasn’t expected, given a pandemic,” she said. “In the
It’s hard to picture the imaginary lines that make up the borders between towns and cities. So back in the day, town leaders were required to occasionally perambulate the borders of the town to make sure everything matched up on the map and in the record books.
There are places across Connecticut where visitors can see exactly where the town borders meet — the most famous being the “Tri-State Marker” in Thompson denoting where Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island come together. In some towns are locations known as “selectmen’s stones,” small rocks etched with initials and dates that mark a place where town borders meet and when perambulations took place.
But Canfield-Meadow Woods Nature Preserve is home to the rare selectmen’s boulder marking where the northern portion of Essex meets Deep River. The formation is known as the “Town Line Boulder” and several dates can clearly be seen etched into the boulder, including 1820. The 300-acre preserve in Deep River and Essex is a fun romp past some other neat rock formations — Eagle Rock, Cleft Rock, Castle Rock, Split Rock — that will have you both nodding your head in agreement and scratching your head as you ponder the genesis of their names.
There are myriad trails at the preserve, so it will take some planning before you start the visit. The main entrance along Route 154 has a map kiosk as well as paper maps. There are also maps and “you are here” signs placed strategically around the preserve with trails well marked and blazed.
The beauty of Canfield-Meadow Woods is it swallows you up into the natural world quickly and holds on with few signs of civilization interrupting your wilderness trek. The woods are full of stone walls, huge trees and daunting rock formations. At times it’s hard to believe the preserve is only 300 acres.
The main entrance includes a trip across the Valley Railroad which once took passengers and freight along the Connecticut River from State and Commerce streets in Hartford to the Fenwick section of Old Saybrook between 1871 and 1968.
The Essex Steam Train runs along a portion of these tracks, so look both ways before crossing the tracks and entering the preserve.
From here, the preserve envelops the visitor in the natural world. According to the trail map, the purpose of the preserve is to “keep intact our natural heritage ... by ensuring diversity and by protecting native plants and animals.”
I took the main trail marked with yellow blazes to the blue “overlook” trail to the “primitive” trail to “long” trail and the overlook on top of Book Hill. The overlook is 315 feet high and one of the highest points in Essex. A wooden platform will take visitors even higher for a better view. A sign asks hikers to imagine the view when the area was all pasture and farmland.
Another must-see attraction is a giant tulip tree — one of the biggest in the state — located along the Canfield Trail. The massive arbor is well over a century old and once provided shade for the former farmland. The tree has seen better days, but it remains an imposing figure along the trail.
The Town Line Boulder is located farther to the north of the tree. Visitors can climb to the top of the boulder and search for the years “1820” and “1849” as well as initials chiseled into it. And then one can hop off and land in either Essex or Deep River; it’s one of those hike bragging moments where you can say it only took seconds to hike between Essex and Deep River.
Visitors should also be on the lookout for “The Gap” and “Split Rock,” a pair of other striking stone features which will leave no doubt about how they were named. The trails are fun for families, as they can turn their hike into a 300-acre scavenger hunt.
This article appears in the September 2021 issue of Connecticut Magazine. Follow on Facebook and Instagram @connecticutmagazine and Twitter @connecticutmag.