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.
“It’s exciting to see new actors that you haven’t necessarily seen before,” says Lucy Bevan, who teamed with Emily Brockmann for the second time (the first was on Game of Thrones) to cast A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. “As an audience member, you feel like you are discovering them for yourself.”
There are few shows that have been as successful in introducing new faces as HBO’s medical marvel The Pitt. In what they described as “the great experiment,” because of the show’s unprecedented single-shift format, casting directors Cathy Sandrich Gelfond and Erica Berger — who won an Emmy for their work on season one — were given carte blanche to cast more than 250 roles in the fictional Pittsburgh ER.
“Everybody across the board said, ‘Just find the best possible actors for these parts,’ and that’s a casting director’s dream come true,” Berger says. Given the show’s 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: “We needed people who were fast on their feet because of the intensity. We don’t have marks, so there’s a lot of movement all the time; you have to be very nimble.”
