Group Dynamics
Casting directors and filmmakers talk about assembling their onscreen ensembles
INVITING JUST THE RIGHT combination of guests to a party can be nerve-wracking for a good host. Similarly, those casting an ensemble movie know that the precise blend of people can make it a blowout or a bust. For the teams behind “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “The Iron Claw” and “The Color Purple,” balancing individual roles with the picture’s greater needs took skill as well as a precise strategical approach.
Casting directors Ellen Lewis and Rene Hayes needed to fill Martin Scorsese’s “Killers” with both actors and non-actors alike. Their goal was to populate the Osage nation on screen with Indigenous people in order to bring a grounded realism to the project — but experience and inexperience don’t always play well together without the right anchor.
“I know that not only is Marty amazing working with non-actors, but so are Leonardo Dicaprio and Robert De Niro,” says Lewis. “You’re putting people who are perhaps acting for the first time into a very safe environment.”
The Indigenous cast, many of whom have personal connections to the horrors of the true story, faced what would already be a challenge even in the best of circumstances. Acting opposite seasoned, Oscar-winning actors such as Dicaprio and De Niro might make even up-and-comers step onto set with some trepidation. “This was a tremendous opportunity for our female Indigenous actors in particular, who don’t often get opportunity like this,” says Hayes.
Before they find the right actors, however, casting agents must choose the right audition material for them. “I don’t believe in giving actors the most emotional scene to do,” Lewis explains, acknowledging that other casting teams and directors operate differently. Instead, she pulled some of the film’s more hushed scenes for early auditions. “I want to know that I believe the words [the actor] is saying, and that’s generally not the peak of emotion.”
While Lewis and Hayes held massive open calls in Indigenous areas to populate the film, casting director John Papsidera had an entirely different strategy with Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” clearly a very different movie aside from their shared true story origins.
“Oppenheimer” features a veritable who’s who of recognizable actors, including Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon and Emily Blunt — and that’s by design. “Chris and I talked about the idea that that’s the space that [these people] held in the real world in the 1940s,” says Papsidera. “They were rock stars of their time, they did have gravitas, they did have a space of being bigger than life in that world. So, we wanted to represent that out of the fairness to history.”
There was a conscious balance in the process, though, because they didn’t want the film to turn into a celebrity variety show and take away from the essence of the script and story. For the most part, Papsidera says he already knew the actors he cast in the main roles.
Papsidera also focused a lot on international casting as well, finding actors who resembled their real-life counterparts.
Those who auditioned didn’t use pages of the actual script, which remained under lock and key, but utilized scenes from other movies that required comparable skillsets, like rattling off complex equations.
For all that appeared on the page for some actors, others were tasked with doing a lot with very little. “We really tried to find people that brought their own persona and their own weight to those roles to fill the room, so it didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, there’s a star and then there’s a bunch of air around them,’” Papsidera explains. He uses Lloyd Garrison (Macon Blair) and Patrick Blackett (James D’arcy) as examples, noting that their presence was integral to the scenes they were in even if they didn’t have the most lines. They had to fully exist in the moments between the lines of dialogue.
Similarly, for all the memorable (and famous) Barbies and Kens in “Barbie,” casting directors Allison Jones and Lucy Bevan also had to find actors who could do a lot with the in-between spaces.
In addition to the recognizable dolls represented on screen was Allan, a generally forgotten toy released by Mattel as Ken’s friend. He never quite achieved even the same status as the better-known Skipper, who was Barbie’s little sister. It was a casting that Jones raves about since whomever played Allan was required to strike that perfect balance of acting invisibly while invisibly acting.
“We perfectly cast Michael Cera because Allan is somebody who [doesn’t stand out],” Jones says with a chuckle. “Michael Cera still made him almost the most beloved character in the whole movie.”
Bevan adds that everyone’s time on screen is integral to the movie. “Every part of the huge ensemble, which it was, was as important as the leads. We had to find actors who really could say those beautiful lines tonally.”
And talk about tone — the Kens auditioned with the innuendo-laden “beach-off ” scene from the film to show they understood the feel of the Barbie world. It’s not an easy task to understand the nuance of this movie from just a bit on paper.
Refinement was important for “The Iron Claw,” as well. Casting director Susan Shopmaker recognized that the role Maura Tierney ultimately filled as Doris Von Erich, the matriarch of the wrestling family, required impeccable casting.
“On the page, the mom is quite cold and withdrawn, and yet you had to believe she and her husband really loved each other,” says Shopmaker, noting there still had to be an element of warmth because she’s a mother.
“Claw” writer-director Sean Durkin knew Shopmaker prior to the film, having worked with her for years as a casting assistant. Durkin says he relishes in the silent moments on screen and knew Tierney was “going to come in and quietly deliver this heartbreak in a family where she can’t really show her emotions.”
As in life, on-screen silence is as important as the words that bookend it.
For “The Color Purple” director Blitz Bazawule, there was also the aspect of leaning into silence, even for a movie musical. For a role like Jon Batiste’s Grady, the partner of the flamboyant Shug Avery, he specifically “needed someone who would pop off the screen with a lot of charisma.”
With a story that’s already seen multiple iterations on film and stage, Bazawule wanted to cast actors who would bring their own interpretation to the project. Likening it to a song remix, he observes that when a song is covered or remixed by another group and it’s essentially the same in the end, it renders itself unnecessary. “I like remixes that give new layers to the existing number,” says Bazawule, adding that he told the cast their job was “not to mimic anybody who’s done it.”
In the end, whether it’s the perfect dinner party or mega-movie ensemble, finding the right blend of people to populate the space is everything; listeners are as important as talkers, and each needs the other to function together successfully. Plus, knowing your role and flourishing in it is the best way to get asked back next time, too.