Jody Furlong, Founder of The Eye Casting

0:02Jody Furlong: Welcome to the Business of Modeling, the podcast where we explore the fascinating world of the modeling industry. I'm Tessa Dewing, the Managing Director of Sandra Reynolds, a commercial model agency celebrating its 50th year in business. Today's guest is Jody Furlong, founder of the iCasting, a casting company working across fashion, advertising and commercial campaigns. Jodie has built a reputation for casting that feels current, considered and rooted in real people.

0:41Jody Furlong: So Jodie, welcome to the Business of Modelling. Thank you for having me. It's an honour. Oh, thank you.

0:53Jody Furlong: just start by talking us through like your background where did you grow up what were you like as a child so i grew up well i was born in london um and you know i've got a twin brother we run the eye together yeah so um we were born in london but grew up in maidstone in kent my dad's from nigeria um they weren't together long after we were born and she moved back to made stone and you know with two black kids in the early 70s yeah it wasn't the easiest thing stuck out yeah very very much so um but because i think because there was two of us and my mom's a very strong woman and like she doesn't put up with anything and like i think because there was always two of us at school in anything we ever did during school or you know any clubs or anything through our lives when we were kids there was always two of us i don't think we ever noticed and your mom prepared you not to take any shit absolutely um and so i don't think i can never say that we grew up surrounded by racism or you know bullying or anything it was there but we didn't take a blind bit of notice of it so and i think it's like so lucky to have a twin brother um because every time like your first day at school the first day of cubs or whatever you did there's always someone to do something with yeah and someone that's going through the same thing as you exactly so we had an incredible childhood um you know we didn't have any money we grew up on a council estate um one parent family and my mum was a dinner lady a cleaner um and then when we got a bit older and she could work full-time she she worked with um kids with disabilities she was like a care assistant so that's that's our background and then I think when we grew up in the 80s all our interest was like it was music it was and I say we a lot in this so you guys have always been just super close and yeah i mean yeah i i you know you hear about twins who don't get on and i'm like what a waste yeah i mean we have we have our moments maybe we'll talk about some are you similar now or we're i think if you don't know us you think we're similar if you know us we're very different right you have different personalities and yeah um but you know from afar we're very similar it's actually it's interesting you've asked me to do this this month because it's 20 years this month is 20 years it's was i set it up originally and Then Bayer joined a year or so later to open the agency.

3:01So, yes, so all we ever wanted to do was move to London and go to nightclubs and meet people. That was kind of our ambition. That's what we did in the 80s. That's exactly what I did. So I came to London to uni and Bayer went to do film studies in Canterbury. So I moved to London and the whole point was to move to London and go out.

3:22Jody Furlong: What did you do at uni? Well, I did something called cultural studies first. and the only reason I did the course was because it was in London. Okay, so it could have been anything. It's not because you were in London. I don't know what we're doing. One week we were studying The Tempest and then the next week we were doing something about a poem about cats and then it was like, what? I had no clue what it was on about. And then I saw a, there was a notice in like the common room that said we're starting a media studies course next year. So if anybody wants us to move to the media studies course.

3:51So I left that course.

3:52Jody Furlong: So that sounded more interesting. Left that course, did a media studies course. did a year of media studies, took a year off because I was too busy partying, and then eventually went back and finished my degree. Like, it took me five years to do my degree because I was not interested in studying. The point of going to uni was not to study. The point of going to uni was to move to London. Put a party and move to London. And what did you do? Did you do sort of work in between? Did you work in bars and stuff? So, well, this is quite interesting because this is how I got into casting and having the agency.

4:19Yes, we did part-time jobs. We did a job in a bar, worked in a bookshop. but a lot of what we did in the 90s was i'm gonna not modeling because like we're not fashion models but we're in tons of pop videos there probably wasn't a nightclub scene in the whole of a tv show in the 90s that me and bio weren't in that's how we kind of made a bit of supporting artists supporting artists videos um commercials i was i did this big campaign for tipex once where i had to play a um play a keyboard and they threw the tipex at me and then i had to remember that rolly tipex that came yeah yeah so it was an advert for that absolute nightmare okay so you started yeah so that's how in front of the camera exactly and the whole storyline of this there was there was a there was a secretary a businessman and i was a musician of course because i was black and i had dreadlocks so so the whole storyline was i'm writing some playing the keyboards and writing some music and i'd make a mistake and then tipex comes flying in and i catch it and i mark out the mistake but I had to film it all backwards oh so you were doing it and then you were thrown

5:25Jody Furlong: yeah yeah because they wouldn't have had AI and all this it was absolutely I mean you must have done 70 takes it was absolutely awful people get kind of saying yeah man you're really cool you're just like Lenny Kravitz I was getting so pissed off because it was just really poor directing Like it was an impossible thing to do. Impossible to do. Yeah. You had to go from a smile into a frown. And then it was CGI. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was kind of one of the more memorable jobs. But yeah, so we did a lot of that kind of stuff in the 90s. Okay. Coming into the 2000s. But like it was getting to a point when getting to mid to late 20s and thinking, I don't do this forever.

6:04What am I going to do? Spent the whole year, whole summer in 2000 in Ibiza. and I remember meeting someone out there who worked for a TV show and we used to do all the bits on that TV show sometimes came back to London and thought oh god do something like what can I do and a friend of a friend was I'd forgotten this do you remember what was the casting studio at the top of Tottenham Court Road casting cabin

6:29Jody Furlong: yes yes so my friend worked for Debbie Shepard do you remember Debbie Shepard yeah I do and they said they needed a receptionist at the casting cabin so I went and worked there and then I ended up working a bit for Debbie Shepard as well and then a friend from Ibiza knew someone who was a casting director in London and I ended up doing a bit of street casting for her and then ended up working for her practically full-time as a casting assistant from that we did all the Dove adverts so this is way back in the early 2000s loads of street casting they were great they were really one of the first ones they were the first casting I think yeah body shop and then Dove yeah and I remember the first weren't the norm exactly and the first ever campaign we didn't do, but the second one we did.

7:09So from then on, you know, when you first started saying, oh, we've got these, do you want to be...

7:15Jody Furlong: And actually you couldn't, at that point, probably a lot of model agencies weren't representing people like that. So you had to go out and find them. And the whole ethos of it was it was real. But I remember when we first started doing it and the first campaign hadn't come out, but we were casting for the second campaign. And we kept saying, oh, you know, we want curvy women and we want to be in their underwear. And I was like, what are you nuts? Yeah, what's that kind of a lie? When the campaign came out, we were like, like this. And they're like, oh. So that was really interesting. And that was kind of got me into doing street casting.

7:44And that's kind of, you know, a few years later, that was kind of the whole ethos when we started The Eye was kind of the street casting vibe. And at some point I just thought, you know what,

7:52Jody Furlong: I probably could do this for myself. When I left working for the casting director I was working for then, I did think about doing it for myself, but I didn't. And this comes back to what I was saying earlier about when you come from, well, I came from a council estate, one parent family. I didn't know anyone around a business I didn't know like I'd make all these oh I don't know how to do that I don't know how to do an invoice things that you can learn in five minutes but unless you've got that kind of role model or someone telling you that you can do it it's a very difficult step to take you have to take a big risk and you have to trust yourself and you have to have the confidence to do it and I feel like for a long time and I think that partly pays into why so you were working for someone else at that point you can't then go oh well actually can I still work for you while I set up on my own and try well what happened there was

8:40she kept going on holiday leaving me in charge and then coming back and not being happy because I was in charge and clients were asking for me so it did become a bit fraught towards the end and I did leave I'd went to work for someone else for a little bit and then I got offered a job at a model agency this is like six to eight months later I was going to take this job at the model agency and I thought no do you know what I'm not going to I'm going to set up by myself and also I'd had a night out with a friend and she's American and very like confident

9:04Jody Furlong: and she'd shouted at me and and so that confidence yeah and she's like what why are you working for people you're like you're this and you're then you can do it yourself and at the time I was mortified at her I was embarrassed for her because he was like this very bravado American and I was like oh how embarrassing like but she was 100 % right 100 % right and no one had ever said that to me before so yeah so I did it I was saying 20 years ago this month what happened was um a photographer that I'd whose wife I'd worked for she worked for an ad agency that did all dove adverts and we were friendly and her husband asked me to do a bit of street casting on a job and I I don't know I had a bit of money and I thought you know I this this could last me a month yeah so i could take that risk i didn't have a computer at home back then my friend jemma at profile models so she's still there now she at the time had um a photographer's agency or makeup agency or something and she was moving and she had a spare computer she gave me her computer so i got my host i put it on my desk and i got a phone line put in didn't have a phone line put they had the phone in the next day someone called me and said michelle from broadcasting Do you remember Broadcasting Agency from the 90s, which me and Bayer belonged to?

10:23She tells me that you're doing casting. And I was like, what?

10:26Jody Furlong: How? What? I guess I've sold a few people, but it wasn't common knowledge. And it just literally like that took off. Brilliant. Just through referrals, word of mouth. Yeah. And I think this refers back to all the partying and socialising I've done in the 90s, which at the time was just fun. You were building your contacts. And what happened was my first big client was ranking, actually, because previous casting director had worked for him. They hadn't worked together for a couple of years because personal stuff. But his then producer, another just random, her girlfriend's best friend was my friend.

11:03And it was all like, what? So it's just all luck and contacts and socialising.

11:07Jody Furlong: But that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't put yourself out there for those years beforehand. Exactly. And I think that's what we miss in the industry now. Absolutely. the social element. It's not like that now, is it? We'll get to that because that's the biggest change, I think, in the last few years. So, yeah, so literally I went from not having agency or not being a casting director and in a month's time doing a worldwide campaign for ranking. So where did the name come from? The Eye. So when we were doing street casting for other people, like my bio and I, and also some of my friends used to get involved because you need a big team to street cast.

11:39Back in the day, you couldn't do it on social media. You actually literally had to go out in the street.

11:42Jody Furlong: Had to go out and street cast, yeah. And we used to say you'd send one person out and they were great at the chat and they'd come up with 100 photos and you could use two of them because they just weren't any good. Right, right. And you could send me or Bayo or Dian or, you know, people who worked with me out and you'd come up with 20 people, but 18 were perfect. And we said you've got to have the eye. So that was how the name came up. So, yeah, it went from literally zero to full on straight away. I think what helped was... But it was just you to start with? Just me to start with. When I had big street casting jobs, obviously Bayer would help me or, you know, different friends and people I had.

12:18I had a team of people. But yeah, I think what happened was, this is 20 years ago, and street casting was just becoming the thing. And my social circle was Shoreditch. That's where I went out. That's where my friends were.

12:33Jody Furlong: And that was also where all the cool people were. Every brief that came out, Shoreditch, Trendy, Hoxton, this. I was like, literally just my mates. Just going out the door. So instead of getting a casting director who had to find, we were that scene. Yeah. And so it was very natural. So we had like fashion magazines calling us. We had, I did all the Nokia campaigns for two years because it was all street casting. And the woman at Nokia said, we're just going to get you to do it. So every photographer had to use me, which was a nice introduction to lots of people. So yeah, it was right place, right time.

13:06But there was an element of luck. But I also think you make your own luck, right?

13:09Jody Furlong: Yeah. I'd put in the hours of clubbing, of going to nightclubs knowing if we were a DJ. That was smart, yeah. Absolutely. And then, I don't know if you know Horton Stevens. Yeah. Yeah, the photography agency. Sue and Neil, who became also massive clients of mine because I met Sue. Sue, we went to a warehouse party in Walthamstow in 93, I think. My brother had his hair in two buns. And this woman in the queue had her hair in two buns. And she's like, oh, hello. And that was Sue Horton Stevens. Oh, hello, hello. Brilliant. And so that's how we became friends. So a lot of that kind of, at the time, was just having fun, actually turned out to be really useful.

13:49Much more useful than, you know, studying this and going there and going to this networking event and all the rest of it, which I'm still to this day absolutely useless at. Yeah, it wasn't a waste of time. It was actually very useful.

14:07I was what late early 30s then yeah in some ways that's I mean now everyone's trying to do everything when they're 15 aren't they yes and expecting it by the time they're 60 yeah yeah

14:18Jody Furlong: so in some ways it takes years of hard work yes but I put in the groundwork beforehand absolutely I had the context I knew exactly what I was doing I knew how to cast something I understood a brief I knew what I knew all this stuff. So when I did start. As if you'd have tried to do it when you were 21. Exactly. It wouldn't have worked. Exactly. Because you didn't have the knowledge. Exactly. It did kind of pick up really quickly. I went from like literally getting up in the morning, going to this old computer that someone had given me, sitting down and then realising it was six o 'clock and I hadn't eaten anything and I was sitting in my pants.

14:46Like I was that busy. And then out all weekend doing street casting. But then you love it.

14:51Jody Furlong: You're doing something you love. Exactly. And it didn't feel like work. And it didn't feel like I was building something because it was just, it was literally one, what am I doing next, next, next, next, next. I didn't have, I never had a business plan. I never like had any, any plans whatsoever. So how did you get around doing all of the accounts and things like that? Well, I mean, when you first start. Did you just learn as you were going? Yeah, and it's not, it was basic arithmetic, right? You add up what comes in, you add up. Don't spend as much as. Yeah, exactly. You take off whatever the tax is.

15:19So the first, to begin with, I did my own accounts because I was a sole trader. And then a year or 18 months later, it got a bit more complicated because we started the agency as well. But so what happened was my brother at the time was working at Oxygen Models. He was a booker there. Okay. Remember Oxygen?

15:34Jody Furlong: Yeah, yeah, I do. And they got a phone call saying they were looking for someone who did street casting to do a TV show. And you'll remember this. Find me the face. Yeah, that's where we met, wasn't it? Because we found that gorgeous model there. Yes. that was for Nivea I think yes it was Nivea I do remember that no this is a funny story because we went so I got this phone call do you know and he said instead of telling the office he said you need to call my brother like a bit on the sly so they called me and I got this job to do this TV show and I'd only had my own company for a year then so this was coming up for 2007 the summer of 2007 we were supposed to start filming so I had to literally be out of the office for weeks on time because we filmed six episodes or eight episodes and we were all over the country we had to go to scotland to cheshire to bristol to manchester looking for these models so the premise was there was myself and there was becky who who'd become a little bit infamous she was on a tv show in america about a model agency and she'd be rude about someone so she was the other girl and i was like oh god she sounds like a big mouth i'm not gonna like her we've got like a house on fire she's still my mate to this day is she yeah the producers tried to keep us apart because they wanted this competition element but the first day we went into the office they were like oh we've got a problem so the idea was it's called find me the face and it was find me the face for nivia or coke or whatever no one had thought this is a bbc program and they're not allowed to use branding of course so we went in the first day and they're like this show isn't going ahead at the moment we have to come up with new concepts and they just threw out these ridiculous concepts to me and becky who like just sat there getting more and more annoyed and bonded over this stupid because you don't understand the industry doesn't work yeah eventually they come up with the idea that what we'll do is we'll find someone and sign them to an agency yeah so that's where you came in um so one of the episodes was i think it's a mum it was like a yeah it was but that was for nivia i think no we weren't we weren't allowed to say nivia you might have got them a job for nivia so in the actual program i didn't say nivia no we had to say find a job for them for the agency because we weren't allowed to say a product i see i see okay which in reality in the background yeah it was it was for a nice nivia campaign right i didn't know that yeah no she's got a lovely nivia campaign yeah so so what happened was because I was going to be out the office so much Bayo who didn't really like where he was working I said well why don't you come and work at the eye and you can cover the casting while I'm away so by this time I'd got a desk space in an office but just a desk one desk and then the program got put off so there's me and Bayo working from one desk about to kill each other oh god and that's when the concept of opening the agency came up and At this point, we'd done so much street casting.

18:12We had a database of all these cool street cast people. And I remember different casting directors were calling me and saying, oh, I hear you've got all these cool street cast people. And we're like, yeah, we have. So we set up an agency and the whole premise was street casting. And back then, and now I realise that this whole kind of street cast aesthetic that every model agency has now, you know, even the big fashion agencies have someone with a gap in their teeth or someone who freckles. I was like, I don't, we kind of started that.

18:40Jody Furlong: There was no, there was no agencies that did that. There was no one doing that at the time. There was, you had the lifestyle agencies, your kind of agency. Yeah, yeah. We had like the fashion ones who were doing the catwalk. Yeah. And you had character agencies, which is maybe mums and granddads. Yeah, uglies, looks. Yeah, yeah. But you didn't have like the street cast thing. No. And so when we started it, we just did it because these were the people we had in our books. And the whole point was the cool people. You know, people you see and say, oh, they're cool. Don't care how tall you are. So they took that side off.

19:06Jody Furlong: Yes. So don't care how tall you are. Don't care what size you are. Don't care. And you just called it the eye agency. You kept the name. Exactly. It was just simpler. And that took off straight away as well. Because once again, instead of going, oh, we need to street cast for so-and-so, call Hoxton people. A cast member said, oh, just send who you like. Send who you like to the casting because you've got all the people. And they'd say the casting was really boring. And then you'd know when the eye people showed up because we understood that aesthetic. Because they'd be like, oh, they're interesting.

19:32Exactly. and that was once again I'm not a fan of the word luck because I think you do make your own luck and we did make our own luck but the timing was absolutely spot on and would you say that is what you're known for now still yeah to this day it's kind of what we're known for and it's also just what we like to do I can cast anything you like but what I really want you to come and ask me to do is we've got to go and find some interesting people or you know someone with a story that's where I think we excel.

20:04Jody Furlong: How much is it sort of instinct versus experience when you're casting? There's a certain aesthetic that you can't teach really and I think it's the same as an agent when you get a brief in you've got to understand the references like so it's a little bit of both experience comes from understanding how to read a brief understanding what the parameters are understanding timescales and budgets and all of that kind of thing that can be taught but i don't think you can teach someone to have the eye exactly well yeah yeah i guess so someone said to me the other day a casting director said to me about baio who still you know to this day runs the eye agency and was like his suggestions are absolutely perfect he knows his models he knows their skills and he'll send me a tight package and i know i can call them all into the casting Well, as an agent, you know, it's, you've got to know your people.

20:54Jody Furlong: You've got to know your clients, your brands and your people because there's absolutely no point. And you coming to us and us literally just putting in a database, old brown hair, 20 to 30. Anyone can do that. I remember during lockdown when we were all trying to find something to do. And one of your bookers, and I can't remember who it was now, said to me, Jodie, can we jump on a Zoom with you? Because like, we're just trying to, yeah. And they just, just a Zoom, some advice, what's good about the agency? what can we do better yeah and i one of the things i said to them please don't send me a package with 50 people in it no i don't you need to do that no you need to do a little bit of the job for me if every agency sends me a package of 50 people and i'm only selecting 20 to 25 like what am i doing so if you send me a tight package of 10 people who are brilliant yeah then you're going to see them exactly you get to know those agencies you get to know who's good oh my god there is a very finite amount of agencies i actually send a brief to unless it's a brief i'm struggling on or it's a brief that is you know a bit complicated but if you're sending a brief out for you know mum in 30s and i put that out and you get 5 000 exactly so it's having you know you've got to trust the agencies you work with and you build up that trust i've worked for you guys for ever since i've started yeah same with mot same same with models ones yeah all these people that i've known forever yeah and i know i can send them a brief i know that you can pick up the phone have a chat with them i know they're going to be honest about things um much prefer to do that than an agency who just send me everybody on their books.

22:20Yeah, he's just a booking.com.

22:28When we first started and the street casting, you'd get a job and they planned six weeks in advance. I'd go into an ad agency with the photographer. We'd all have a chat and explain.

22:41Jody Furlong: You'd be much more involved. Much more involved. And, you know, because we were more involved, I understood the whole project. And you could do a better job. much better job we have the time to do time is so important budget you know budgets are in a joke nowadays not i'm not going to complain about what casting gets paid but what the talent gets paid is a joke and it makes my job a whole lot more difficult and it makes your job a whole lot more difficult and it makes the model's job almost impossible i think to be a full-time model these days is absolutely impossible and because you can't be a full-time model you've got to have another job you become unavailable you don't have time to yourself tapes and i've got a client shouting at me and I'm like I've they only got it yesterday they haven't had time they've working they've got kids yeah so yeah all those things but yeah back in the day for example we did Nokia we did Nike we did all these things and the brief was like cool people and you'd literally go out to Shoreditch to Camden or whatever and spend a Sunday afternoon have a few beers and go out and stop and chat to the coolest people and some of these people like my friends for life you know just random people you met on the street doing this and I do miss that um and I miss you know it's not the same on social media no and it's even not the same in this job anymore where we there is not a social element to this job no no that's really sad really sad like when i do do a live casting which is you know very rarely and usually maybe a recall or something specific how excited the models are the actors are they come in they i did one a couple of years ago and all these people come in i think it might have been just after lockdown we're all a bit like a bit excited just to see people and there's all these models coming through and i was like oh my god i did this job with you in 2007 and i was going back on my my website finding the photos oh god do you remember that yeah yeah and then people look at your hair then yeah and people were coming in and bumping into their mates in the waiting room going oh my god let's go and have a drink i haven't seen you for years yeah it's lovely well we're doing we're upstairs all week um doing a casting with with all of our actors division we've got all of our actors agents and we're seeing all of our actors and we've got them doing different scenarios we've got them filming a new slate we've got and they're all just like oh my god this is so lovely like to just to come in and they're all up there chatting they're all sitting and you know it it doesn't happen as much anymore not at all and even with my clients i'm working for the ad agency the production company the photographer yeah i never even meet them no right so there's someone who i've had this intense relationship with a month emailing back and forth all the time talking because no one wants to speak to you either you can't half people don't even have a phone number do they but you've got this intense relationship with someone for a month yeah don't know what they look like unless i've looked up their linkedin don't really know them don't really know them and then you don't hear from them for another six months they're like so and so and i'm like um rachel and i have to go back in my emails and try to remember who they are whereas back in the day you'd go to the ppm you'd have meetings you like you'd get to know people on a social level as well after you'd get go to the shoot with all the streetcast people because you kind of had to take care of them after the shoot you'd all go for a drink so that element of this industry so i find it quite difficult these days everyone's so cautious about everything nowadays aren't they and remember back in the day you do a job and you know it was you know this job is for the uk and germany yeah yeah yeah and that's the buy-ups you're going to get yeah and if if it's used so-and-so then extra and you know might come back because it's going to be in Turkey and then it's going to be here.

26:06Now everyone wants a worldwide bout on everything.

26:08Jody Furlong: Yeah. On everything that they have no intention of using anywhere apart from two countries. So the money is for the two countries. And we're just putting it worldwide just in case. Then we're just seeing if we can slip that through without anyone noticing. And I do understand on one level because everything is so global these days, right? They're worried that it's going to end up on a website in somewhere and we're not covered for it. And it's different. Yeah, online is just completely... I get it. But there's ways of writing that into a contract, right? There is, yeah. Absolutely. I could do that for you in one minute.

26:34So could you. It's also, there's this whole element of everyone's on a free, on like producers and like people who are doing the jobs. They're on a short term contract. They're freelance. They may not be there next month. We don't want to have to find them two years down the line and not know who. So it is becoming almost like a little bit of a race to the bottom, I think. And as a casting director, like we, we do a lot of people coming to us and saying, Oh, could you give us a quote for this? And I'll email your guys and go ballpark. And I know what I think, but I'm always going to put it out there.

27:03And the ridiculous difference in quotes that I get.

27:07Jody Furlong: Why are you asking for one then? Just tell us what you're going to pay. So I will go to you and I'll go to a couple others. You guys always quote just about what I'm thinking as well. And then otherwise they quote either so stupidly high, it's not the 90s, you know what I mean? You're not getting that. Or like literally money that doesn't pay for anything. And it's like, what do I do with these quotes that are tens of thousands of pounds different? And then you go to, you find a kind of a ballpark and you send it to the client. Oh, we don't have that. What do you have? Well, I don't know. Well, then why you ask your wife, we just wasted all of this back and forth time.

27:41I did seven quotes for a job the other week. Not for Mike, for the models. Seven, back and forth. What about this? And what about if we did this? And what about, like, make up your mind, know what you want. Come to me with a budget and then I'll make it work. And then we'll work with it. And I say to you, you'll get what you pay for. Do you know, you don't, if you want.

27:57Jody Furlong: Yeah, but we want her. Well, you can have her. You have her. I did this street cast job once. It was for a very, very, very big fashion brand. They came to me and they said, we're doing a fashion show. We've got the models or we will get the models for the show. But we're making a video that's going to go on the back screen while we're doing the show. OK. And London's really cool. And we really want London street cast. Cool. OK. They gave me one weekend and all their references were 90s supermodels. It was like Kate Moss, Amber Valletta, Eva Herzegova, Nadja Alman. And you're meant to find them in...

28:32Jody Furlong: And I'm like, if I could find them in one weekend, I wouldn't be sat here. I'd be in the Bahamas, right? That's so funny. So what are you... So in the end, we've gone from model agencies. We just went and got new faces from model agencies. But it's just so nuts, the expectations that people think is possible over a weekend. They don't understand. Yeah, exactly.

29:00Jody Furlong: Tell me how briefs have changed over the time. You must have seen, you know, it completely changed from having diverse casting now. You wouldn't believe the things we used to get asked. I used to go to lots of meetings. We talked about how you used to go to meetings. And because I walked in the room, obviously people probably didn't know my race when I walked before I walked in the room. And suddenly people started talking in gobbledygook because they didn't want to say what they really wanted. And they'd be like, oh, you know, it mustn't be too Benetton ad. I don't know. People say that all the time.

29:30Not too bad. And I say, you can just say what you want. Like, I understand, you know, if you're casting... My job is to find you what you want. And if you're casting an ad vote for Poland, I understand what the aesthetic of the ethnicity of the person. That's fine. I don't mind. I remember doing once, and I think it was for More magazine. It was like a teen, like a... I remember More.

29:47Jody Furlong: ...women's magazine. And we had to do... We had to find 30 different women, and it was all about cool women in London and doing different things. And I got the brief, and I was flicking through the brief. and 28 of them were like... White. Actually, at the time, 30 of them were white, but 27 of them were brown hair. And you can always tell who wrote the brief. It was just, you know, whoever decided who they fancy. A hundred percent. And I remember coming to me and said, oh, interesting, because you want like this cool London, but not one person's of any ethnicity in this. Oh my God. Oh, how awful.

30:18I didn't realise. So they picked two black girls.

30:20Jody Furlong: And they're living in Chelsea or like... Of course. And they picked, they said, oh, yes, we must have different ethnicities. they picked two you know pretty mixed race girls with curly hair and made them djs yeah oh god there's so many i got a brief once for um it was a drink some kind of ouzo drink or something cool hoxton you know it's got to be hoxton trendies no black people no gays and no tattoos hoxton trend so basically your idea of hoxton yeah so you don't want hoxton trendies no exactly so i didn't do that job another job i got and this was for i feel like did you turn it down because of that 100 i emailed it back and said i don't this doesn't this isn't right yeah and i said you've you've come to me pox and trendy because that is what i'm black and gay and there's no one better in london you can get to do this and us our office was literally on shoreditch high street i could literally hang out my window and cast your advert yeah and this is what you come to me if there's not hope in hell i'm casting that no way and then where did you get your first office so i my first desk was in hoxton square and then we moved to just across the road um in old street into this tower and that was a whole thing on itself because that's a funny story oh go on we used to get all these women coming up to our office and asking for jodie and saying could i join your agency okay okay and it was like we're like what um yes so you know And John told me to come and join you.

31:54Jody Furlong: Oh, George. Okay. And we were like, sorry, you're not right for us. Oh, okay. Turns out a couple of offices down, there was an escort agency. And the woman who called everybody was called Jodie. Brilliant.

32:10Anyway, so I think it was 2000. This was only over like an 18-month period. And then we got our office in Shoreditch in 2009. And it was incredible because when we moved in there, the rent was next to nothing um and we had four office weeks four offices we had our office we moved upstairs we rented an office out and then downstairs was our studio we had a casting studio for 10 years we went from having this bustling office with models dropping by you know loads of us in the office um castings going on downstairs to sometimes bayou because then i stopped going to the office because i couldn't be arsed and i worked my home in your pajamas yes um and then it just became pointless so yeah so that was an expense that you didn't need yeah and it was it was also a little bit depressing in the sense that you're coming in to not the same bustling atmosphere that

32:57Jody Furlong: there used to be if somebody had told me before covid that we could function with people working from home i'd have just laughed them out of the room i'd have been like don't be ridiculous yeah we can function it's not the same we're not work from home i make everyone come in they're allowed to work from home days a month. A month? Literally. Because I think you need to be in a collaborative space. I agree, yeah. Especially with young people coming in. You can't train a young person on bloody Zoom. No. It's ridiculous. It's not fair. But you can do a casting from a self-tape. But it's not come back.

33:29I have a love-hate thing with self-tapes.

33:31Jody Furlong: Yeah, I do. I do. It works for a lot of people. Very practical. I understand on a practical level why it's simpler. yeah but it's also not simpler right there's loads of things from from a casting director's perspective we have to request so many self-tapes in order to get enough to to give to the client you want to see around 20 person people per client right yeah so back in the day you'd book in 25 20 20 would show up budgets were higher for models people could afford you know people didn't have to have second jobs people were available to come to a casting we used to write We used to organise a casting for the next day.

34:06People were in town all the time. Exactly. People would come into town. They'd have five castings, right?

34:09Jody Furlong: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So then after lockdown, that doesn't happen anymore. So people are at home. The budgets are much less. The jobs are more precarious. There's loads more model agencies and more models. Everyone's a model on social media. Yeah. So yes, I understand the practicality of a self-tape. But everywhere down the line, it makes our job more difficult. It makes it more difficult for the actors, because what they're getting, or models, because what they're getting is sometimes the most complicated directions from the client. I push back on clients. I don't do lots of TV commercials. I do some TV commercials, but it's very, very rarely scripted.

34:46I'll do a TV commercial if it's a real person, if it's a dancer.

34:49Jody Furlong: So you're mainly stills? Mainly stills. And, you know, everything's got a moving element to it nowadays as well. So if it's a TV commercial, it's with a real person or it's with an interesting story or it's a, you know, it's not an actor. I very rarely do that. But I see the briefs that go out. and sometimes what clients send to me, they want to get in a self-tape. I'm not doing that in a self-tape. A self-tape is for you to get an idea of someone. Do we like them? Yeah, like an intro to it, you know. And if they're good, let's get them in a meet-and-me-person. I agree. But the briefs that go out, you know, you're set on your…

35:17Oh, we get some hilarious. You're set on a sofa, it turns into a car, and then you're flying in the air, and then if you could just film it from the background, and then your kid walks in the room, and it turns into a bunch of flowers all by yourself.

35:28Jody Furlong: No, I agree, 100%. Ridiculous. And it's not fair. Ridiculous. we talk about diversity and diversity we keep going i keep you know sorry i keep going on all kinds of tangents but um we back in the day i was talking about bad briefs used to get and then it changed and we got this all this thing about diversity and it was brilliant and it was the aesthetic that i've been talking about for you know for 10 years in advance it was exactly what our agency stood for and what my casting stood stood for for 10 years and then it all happens and we're all excited and every beef you're getting in we want to cover every all this great But what people forget when they're talking about diversity is sticking a black person in your ad isn't diversity if you're not giving everybody the opportunity.

36:07And what's happened with self-tapes is who gets jobs are the people who are available, the people who have the space, who have the lighting, who don't have kids running about, who've got a white space in the background and enough space.

36:19Jody Furlong: Not the ones that are trying to film it after they've got their kids home from school and they try to do tea and then, you know, they haven't got professional lighting. And you share a bedroom with your sister and your mum's at work nights and, you know, all these things that no one thinks about. In room casting, they've got as much chance as everybody else. 100%. And what you get then is you get the director or the casting director explaining and we might see something in someone. Can you just try that a little bit differently? Exactly. And you don't get that from the self-tape. And also from a self-tape, as a casting director, when I'm casting seven characters and I've had to request 30 plus self-tapes for every one of them, then I've got to rename everything because please people if you're listening to this please name your casting please please please name your self tapes as requested which will be your name or your agency name but the amount of time that I spend renaming things but yeah we get them they come in all different formats different names you've just put a name without an agency and then I have to go back through my whole spreadsheet who they are and where they're from and yeah um yeah so there's all these things going on with self-tapes that I'm I don't love I think they're kind of democratic in one way because it does allow us to call a lot more people but maybe have both you know you there's no reason why you can't have an in room and then you show clients maybe five or ten tapes well that's what I would always suggest I would always suggest let's do self-tapes initially and then call some people we like in I don't know I don't know I don't know what the solution is no because we're not going backwards no we're not are we I thought it would just be I thought it would go back no a little bit to hybrid and it's not really it seems to be mostly self-tapes and what what happens is from a casting perspective i don't think we always find the best people for a self-tape i promise you that not everybody's watching your full self-tape so make your first 30 seconds impactful um with self-tapes make your introduction someone that we want to make watch more i did self-tape once from this girl there was a they had to do like dancing about and jumping on a trampoline but her first minute was so boring that you didn't even get to it no and then when i just she was a i don't know why i'm what men ended up watching by the end it was absolutely phenomenal we didn't get there so please give your energy up front bio who you know my brother who runs the agency he's had people book jobs literally by stopping in a car park and saying guys i'm with my kid i've just been shopping but i've just got i've got 30 seconds I was going to do something for you.

38:45And they got the job. So the self-tape don't have to be perfect. The lighting doesn't have to be perfect. The space doesn't have to be perfect. Stop like spending three hours doing your self-tape. Make it relevant. Make it relevant and make it fun. And make it stand out. Make it something that we're going, oh, you're cool.

39:01Jody Furlong: Yeah. I want to see more of you. Yeah. And if you do it all wrong, but we think you're cool, we still might want to know more, right? Whereas if you make everything precise and perfect, it's boring. Yeah. Not interested. No. You're much better off doing a really good, if you don't have time to do the full self tape, you're much better off doing just a really good intro and saying, guys, I'm so sorry, I'm on set today, I don't have time, but I'd love to do this. But get something in, something entertaining in. I would definitely say that. And so what, from your perspective, what separates someone who gets shortlisted from someone who gets confirmed?

39:32Jody Furlong: Like, what are you looking for? Oh, I mean, who knows? You know, it's that, and it's even more difficult nowadays when you don't meet people. I know models who walk in a room and light up that room. Yeah. And they walk in and the client goes, oh God, incredible. It's an energy. It's a sense of style. It's an open. There's something that people are very, you know, that's just some people are. They have that special spark that you can't teach anybody, right? And you don't necessarily see that on a self-tape. But, you know, sometimes it's nothing to do with that. I think people misunderstand modelling and acting and how you get confirmed.

40:11All the things I just said are very important, right? But what happens in a casting process is the best person doesn't get the job, right? Who gets the job who's right on that day for that specific brief? Not the best person. So I've been in jobs before when, oh my God, fantastic. This person's amazing. And then suddenly they just get forgotten and it's gone to someone else because the client's somewhere. oh we need this because you know we've had research about this something set in their mind

40:38Jody Furlong: exactly and it's it's not you it's not about you and that's really important because i think in this industry rejection is such a big thing but i did during lockdown i did this thing on you know because we're all trying to find something to do yeah i did think ask the eye and i had different people on um i had anna from milk who's been on here i had tree pets i think came on nikki sheldon i had models i had um all different people and one of them was a model called fifi She's super cool because she's kind of like streetcar aesthetic. She works all the time. And she came on and she said, I've never been rejected from a job in my life.

41:09It's not rejection. They just went a different way.

41:11Jody Furlong: Yeah. And I thought that's such a healthy way of looking at things. Healthy way of looking at it. Because it's true. You could be the best person. They might all love you, but you're just not right for that specific role, right? Yeah. It's not to do with you. It's nothing to do with you. And sometimes it just comes down to a random preference. Yeah. It can be the most ridiculous reasons that we've seen. maybe the other person that they want is similar to you and therefore we can't use you because you're going to have two people to do the same all kinds of different reasons maybe you know they use someone your age and the last one they want someone slightly older it could be absolutely anything it's not about rejection at all no one's ever been rejected it's just you weren't quite right for this for this job i think a lot of it comes down to read the brief read what we're actually wanting wanting from you personality 100 100 is really important have something else going on in your life yeah but what clients want is they want someone who's got something going on experience yeah and someone you can come in on yourself you can tell us about you know the sport you do the music you do the traveling you've been doing maybe you're a baker maybe you're a potter something else yeah interesting about yourself that's the kind of jobs i do a lot of those kind of jobs where they're like oh we could shoot if we just want to be a beautiful person just pick anybody because they're all beautiful right so what else have you got to give what is going to make us interesting what's going to make the director think i'd love to work with you because you're an interesting person you've got a story to tell so that's really really important you know when you come into a casting and we ask in a casting oh what have you been up to recently don't just go nothing have an answer to that lie interesting i don't care absolutely because all we're asking it for we don't care what you've been doing we want to see you and we want to see a bit of personality yeah i know models who have the same story they tell every time

43:01Jody Furlong: girls that go into fashion super super young and they only do fashion and they're pressured to be a certain size at a certain way and they don't feel valued on set and they're not really spoken to and and it completely puts them off for life and i'm trying to say but there's a whole other massive market that isn't like that at all it doesn't matter what size you are it doesn't matter you know but it works alongside another career that's flexible and you know and she's now being a journalist and she's had an article published in the guardian which is how i found her and that makes you you know more interesting and it's just really sad that actually that side of the modeling market has put so many people off i agree and when people talk about modeling that's what they think about right and i because also on top of doing um all the things we've talked about the agency and the i'm scout as well so i scout models and i've got models placed in ages all around the world shay maya kate who's like my biggest girl she's the burberry girl she's just naturally she does actually victoria's secret she does everything and that is that is 10 percent of the modeling right yeah when i did find me the face which we talked about right at the very beginning the whole every week was a different type of model yeah and for you we found a mum who modeled we found a curve model we found a boy we found a fashion we found a bikini model there is something for everybody so when you're looking to be a model there's not only one type of modeling and people notice me actually when people say um oh i want to do editorial what you want to be poor yeah i don't want to be a commercial model well all commercial means is you make money right yeah there's nothing wrong with that and you'll have a longer career and actually but a more enjoyable career always seemed to always did that you know those editorial agencies really have to look down on commercial modeling and some of them they all had commercial models yeah yeah but they wouldn't admit that i know an agency that back in the day didn't put any of their commercial models on the website they didn't want people to know but they were the ones that made the money they're the ones who paid for everything of course yeah and how has casting changed with social media and influencers becoming part of the mix i'm not a fan of social media in general i'm just being i'm just being old i can't be bothered yeah um but i understand i understand this is what i was saying earlier But it's good for casting.

45:14Jody Furlong: It's good for scouting. Is it? But then can you contact, people never get back, you know, your messaging on Instagram, do they even? You know, you put a brief on Instagram, people just like it. Yeah, yeah. And don't do anything. But we said like, even for models, it's good to have something else going on. So in that sense, yes, the whole influencer, you know, people are into skateboarding, people are into this, you know, that's very interesting and it gives you, it gives a platform for what your interests are and makes you a rounded person that brands could be more interested in. nowadays i'm a big advocate of booking people through an agency yes we did lots of street casting back in the day but we also set up an agency for street cast people and nowadays unless there's a very specific reason for street casting you know we've got a very personal story we want to tell they can't have done anything else and we don't want to do anything else or there is there are very legitimate reasons for doing street casting i'm always of the opinion yes we'll do some street casting for you but i can find credible people for you through an agency and if they come through an agency you know that they're vetted i know that they've got an element of vetting going on i also know that they've got a element of professionalism that they've been on set before that we're not going to that they're going to show up that there is an element of they know what their job is yeah other thing about social media and using people who aren't in the industry at all is nowadays it just takes one tweet one instagram post to ruin a whole campaign yeah right and if you've got people who aren't in the industry who don't understand the industry who may not understand the usage or the money or how things work all it takes them is to get upset about one thing and to post it and that hundreds of thousands of pounds you've spent is ruined so i would i always say to people i will do some street casting for you and of course we will find some people on but we can't take responsibility for their conduct and also i'm not doing the whole casting that way yeah because i will find you won't even you don't even need to know where i found these people but i will always advocate for doing that because i think nowadays there's so many great people so many great agencies that have that kind of aesthetic from your side what What makes someone easy to work with?

47:13I think communication. I always say to anybody from a client's perspective, there's no point knowing stuff and not communicating it to me. And sometimes there's a very simple solution, but you've gone through three layers and three days and talking to me about it and then it comes to me. So there's that. But also definitely from the model's perspective, and you'll know this, if you send a model a brief or a casting or a job, best thing they can say is, yes, I'll have that self-tape back to you tomorrow or I'm going to that casting tomorrow. The second best thing they can say is, oh do you know i've got something on but give me 10 minutes i'll come back to you about it the third best thing they can say is no i'm absolutely not available can't do it what they the worst thing is to either not get back to us at all or come back you know people say oh i can't i've got the dentist yeah but the casting's at 10 what time should you know i don't want to have a back and forth with you conversation no make it work so you've got to be flexible you've got to be on community communication i think are the best things they're the models that work the most, aren't they?

48:09People who make things happen.

48:10Jody Furlong: Yeah, and they're the ones we call first. Exactly. So we have a model who'd call us and say, so I'm on my way to the casting, but I'm at like Clapham Junction Station. Which platform do I need to get on? I'm not your mum. You shouldn't call your mum. And we still get people call and go, so can you tell me how to get there? What, with technology? No, surely you have a phone with maps on it. What did we have to do? We had A to Z. Telephone boxes. faxes we'd have to actually arrange to meet someone and be there exactly faxes i remember when they first came out as well i'm really old i remember faxes and you used to get you used to have a casting i used to work i've forgotten this i used to work at scallywags the kids agency did you yeah before i went to my b for that summer um and we we used to people call you with a brief yeah explain it you had to write it all down and you had to fax the confirmation.

48:59Jody Furlong: You'd fax some photos. Oh yes. Oh my God. Because if they didn't have the books, because you used to have an agency book and then you could say, page 22, look at this person. And they'd be dated the next day before they were printed. And this is a kids agency as well. So like, within three weeks, they were completely different. But then, if we didn't, we used to fax photos. Can you imagine what they looked like at the other end? Yeah, literally. And people have booked from that as well. Yeah. The best, the best people are the people who say, do you know what? I've got something on that day, but leave it with me and they come back to you like you said can't make it a 10 but i can make it 11 30 yeah brilliant and finally what advice would you give to someone who wants to get into casting oh to get into casting i think there's so many different avenues into casting i'd say contact the cda um which is the casting directors association all the reputable casting directors in london belong to that and see if there's someone who you can help out every now and then i think very good communication skills have spreadsheets admin skills 100 the other thing for casting is you really you really have to understand what it is a client is asking for because sometimes they come to you with the most biggest lot of nonsense like references that make absolutely a blind bit of sense someone who's got the spirit of you know idris alba and um i know Kate Beckett Keira Knightley yeah

50:19I had the other day someone who is like Michael Caine Oliver Reed Helen Mirum and a young Matthew McConaughey what?

50:30Jody Furlong: do you want to send me a movie do you want to send me a little picture of what you're looking what you think that looks like you have to learn to read between the lines understand what the brand is understand you know because they always come up with these pie in the sky ideas what they've done for Yeah, it's never actually, you know, it's just someone random in the office of Sedia and that becomes part of the whole picture. So, yeah. And I think the same for models as well or agents. Understand what the brief is. Understand what's been written. Understand the references. Understand popular culture.

50:56Understand, like, watch adverts and see what's going on in adverts. Do your research. Understand what it is. And even in casting, there's commercial casting. You know, I do mainly photographic and some TV. There's TV. You could be doing theatre. You could be doing musicals. You could be doing pop promos. you could be doing films like there's all different types of things so really do your research and i think the same as anything it's much easier like you said to know stuff from the outside now there's less gatekeeping isn't there with social media but be very realistic about what it is that you that you want to get out of it and be very strategic

51:29Jody Furlong: jody thank you so much you're welcome sorry for rambling

51:41Thank you.