Ariana in Wicked and How to Cast a Billion-Dollar Movie

0:00This episode is brought to you by FX's Love Story, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bissett. The critically acclaimed series explores the undeniable chemistry, whirlwind courtship, and high-profile marriage of one of the most iconic couples of the 20th century. With Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly leading a cast including Naomi Watts, Constance Zimmer, Alessandro Nivola, and Grace Gummer. Called A Stunning Portrait of Love by Variety, Love Story is Emmy eligible in all limited series categories. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. This episode is brought to you by Netflix, presenting Beef, from creator, writer, and director Lee Sung-jin.

0:41The new installment of the eight-time Emmy-winning anthology series features powerhouse performances from Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, Kaylee Spaney, and legendary Korean actors Yoon Ye-jung and Song Kang-ho. Esquire raves its hands down the best TV show of the year, and IGN hails it a masterpiece. Lee Sung Jin's series remains an untouchable force. Beef for your Emmy Awards consideration. It is Thursday, December 11. It's very rare for the Oscars to add or subtract the category. In fact, it's been 25 years since the Academy added an award that was for Best Animated Feature. But starting with the 98th Oscars in March, they're adding Achievement in Casting.

1:24It's a long time coming. The Academy has had a casting branch since 2013, and casting directors obviously play a crucial role in populating film and TV with the right actors, discovering new talent, etc. But how are voters going to evaluate movies to determine which ones are the best cast? I wanted to have a veteran casting director and Academy member on the show to discuss and to talk more broadly about the evolution of casting over the past few years, especially casting these major studio franchise roles, the big sought-after gets that often draw thousands of wannabe stars and require round after round of self-tapes and auditions and chemistry reads, sometimes with multiple levels of filmmakers and studio executives and a sign-off.

2:06With everything from an actor's social media profile to their salary demands to their willingness to shoot in a particular location, it all plays a role in who stars in these big movies. The film adaptation of Wicked was one of those projects. Who Would Play Elphaba and Galinda was literally a billion-dollar question for Universal. And it fell in part to Tiffany Little Canfield, who, along with her partner, Bernie Telsey, was the lead casting director on the two-part adaptation of the Broadway Wicked. Tiffany has cast a ton of films, including big Disney musicals like the recent live-action Little Mermaid and Snow White.

2:39She's doing Moana right now. That's coming out next year. And a ton of TV, like Only Murders in the Building and This Is Us, a bunch of Ryan Murphy shows. We're going to get into the new Oscar category, and we're also going to talk about the challenges of casting these big movies. How casting can generate backlash, we saw that with Snow White, of course, and the feeling when you nail it, like on Wicked, which was not an easy movie to cast. Today is the casting process on the biggest of the big movies from the inside. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

3:14okay we are here with tiffany little canfield casting director extraordinaire welcome thank you for having me we love casting directors we had denise chamian on the show last year she was fantastic and i want to get into the casting oscar and the edition this year but first i want to talk about Wicked because this was not an easy project to cast. A lot of spotlight on this movie, a lot of pressures coming from all directions. You guys kind of nailed it. So I want to talk about how that process came together. What is the mandate from Universal when you have that first meeting with them and with John Chu saying, let's find our stars?

3:56What do they say to you? Do they say, we need a pop star of a certain magnitude? Do they say we don't care who you get as long as the voices are good? Like, what is the mandate? We didn't have a mandate like that on this one, which is so fantastic. It was find the two best actors for these witches. So we were able to have a really open process. But they're not doing unknowns. They're not going to cast unknowns. Yes, they were. They were? They said the two best, they could be still in school. We saw actors who were still in school that we were aware. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Because the way I read it when they were announced was they knew they had star power with Ariana Grande.

4:38So they were able to go with Cynthia Erivo, who is basically an amazing singer and actress and not a name that they knew would be able to be sold. The core fans would love her because she's a Broadway star. But Ariana Grande brings in a general audience. so that you guys were a little bit, you were able to be bold and cast someone like Cynthia Erivo. But you're saying it could have been anyone? This is a unique project. We did not have that at all. In fact, there were some, you know, initially some questions about what a pop star, would that make the film like be taken seriously, right? I think we were in a really rare example where we've had an international hit Broadway show that is still very, very popular globally.

5:24and we needed the best actors for the part. And so there was no mandate on those roles at all. So how many did you see? Oh my God, hundreds. I mean, we really saw between the two of them. Although you are limited by knowing who can sing these roles because these roles are both incredibly difficult to sing. I've worked on a lot of musicals. Sometimes the director and the studio are not that interested in the singing. They know they can fix it in post or whatever they feel. They just want the star power. this was a case where we really knew that the vocal storytelling is completely aligned with the acting storytelling.

6:00So it would be best if we could have people who could really sing it. However, we saw people who would probably need to be helped in post. Yeah, Amanda Seyfried has talked about how she really wanted it. How close did she get? She got very close. I love Amanda. She's incredibly talented. It was an embarrassment of riches towards the end of the process because people really engaged in this. On a project of this size and with these kinds of budgets involved, who is the ultimate decider? Ultimately, from my perspective, of course, we have to have approval. You know, like the choices need to be approved by Universal.

6:37That's I mean, that's anywhere you go. Right. Like that the studio ultimately is going to approve. But I felt like Mark Platt and John Chu. We worked so closely with them. Choose a director. Correct. Right. So John and Mark, to me, ultimately had such a unified vision and are such incredible, you know, like they're an incredible director, producer. I felt like they were going to be able to convince anyone that we need that this was the right choice. And what would that conversation have been like if you had said, our choices are two unknown actresses you've never heard of? I think the conversation would be, would be take a look at these auditions.

7:16Yeah, but let's get real. They knew, like, if I'm Donna Langley, like, you know, as long as Ariana can pass the singing test and you believe in her as an actress, you know the value there. I mean, it's with all of these big projects, you know the value of a star. Like Universal's doing Alice in Wonderland with Sabrina Carpenter. That's going to be a nice match there. Right. But Sabrina Carpenter is an actress who's been proven on Broadway and has been proven in as an actor as well. And so this isn't necessarily like sometimes you can be dead in the water when the announcement comes out and the fans of the show, people don't like it.

7:56Like there was a lot of questioning of Ari when she was announced. And so I think there's a double-edged sword when the audience has such an expectation and a point of view about the performer already. Yeah. How much does that factor in these days? I mean, Disney, you've worked with Disney a lot, and they get so raked over the coals when they announce the star of one of these iconic properties, whether it's Snow White or whether you're working on Tangled right now. I want to correct you, we're not doing Tangled, but we did do the work. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, exactly. But you see, you did Snow White.

8:32You saw the backlash, you know, Rachel Zegler, all of that. How much do those conversations permeate the casting process? At the end of the day, we talk about them a lot. We discuss them and say, here's what may have happened. But remember, these movies a lot of times come out way after. Yeah, but the casting decisions are sliced and diced on social media when they are made. Correct. but you can't necessarily anticipate. How someone acts on social media, for instance. Do we want to anticipate that? Do we want those kinds of questions to be guiding the casting? I think that we are making decisions that we think are fresh and important, regardless of some of the negative things that we don't necessarily appreciate.

9:19There's a lot of that online, I understand. And it gets to the question of, in the casting process, has Disney retreated from willingness to go there? I mean, they'd had this run, a very inclusive casting of some of these star roles like Little Mermaid and Snow White. And I feel like the way that Disney has been messaging lately, they are pulling back from that. I haven't experienced that personally. I feel like when we're in the casting process, we are looking for the best person for the role. And each role is very different. It's not like you can just plug and play these performers. and, you know, usually people in their 20s or early 20s especially aren't necessarily going to push the box office anyway.

10:02So even if they're a pop star, you don't know if that's going to work or click. So I think we're always trying to find, and, you know, with Little Mermaid, it's so funny that there was such a reaction about, you know, how the character looked when at the end of the day, I think real Mermaid fans know that it's the voice. That's the thing that Ariel has that is taken by Ursula in the plotting. Also, it's a mermaid. It's a mermaid. I know. You kind of can't anticipate. But we are thinking about what is the essence of this character. And I would say with The Little Mermaid, it's the voice. Yeah. Hallie was a pop star and she had the voice.

10:38Yeah. So you did work on the live action Moana, correct? Yes. And with a property like Moana that obviously people have strong feelings about and you want someone who has the background, the Polynesian background, and someone who can sing. how many self-tapes do you look at when you are casting a wide net for someone like that when you want an unknown probably and you know that everybody every little girl around the world knows the lyrics to the Moana songs how many self-tapes do you do you guys screen I mean that one is probably into the thousands man how do you remember and like how do you catalog Like what stands out?

11:23Like it's kind of a fascinating process. The thing is, when you're watching a self-tape, you feel it right away. Like you feel it, you feel it. Even if you've seen thousands. Now we work in teams, right? Like Bernie and I are partners. So sometimes if I see one and I've been watching tapes for so long that I feel like my senses have been dulled or whatever, I'm going to send him all the ones I obviously thought were good. And he's going to send me the same. But I also, you know, if my associate says, there's something about this one. I can't tell if it's right. We're all watching that together and it's a process.

11:56So do you assign a number or a letter? Do you give one through 10 and then the 10s move on? I can't do that till later. I have to just when the net is wide, if someone makes me feel something, I'm going to click it into the yes pile at the beginning. But it's not like we're just deciding off of that. We have a full creative process. So I'm going to put a green light to watch again or have a callback or do a Zoom callback with or even just meet anyone that makes me feel there's something interesting about this person. And are those people all cataloged? Does Disney have a database of everyone who's ever auditioned for one of the movies?

12:34In a way, because we use a casting platform to organize, you know, they send them through that and then we can click them and people move into different folders constantly. Those folders can be pretty confusing to look at. And you can dial it up. Polynesian, female, 15 to 22, and then they all pop up. I wish it was that easy, but no. But once they send us a self-tape, then we can have, like, obviously, when we have an open digital thing, people who aren't appropriate for the role still submit themselves. And we can quickly see that they don't fit the bill. They're not right for the role of Moana, us.

13:14So we just put them into another, like a no, you know, per casting or something. Back to Wicked. So for Wicked, do you have a sense in your head going in about some of the out of box choices you want, you are going to push for, whether it's switching a gender of someone from the play or, you know, bringing in this person, I would like to find a role for this person in this project. Do you bring that kind of perspective and how do you communicate that with the filmmaker? We definitely do. We have people that we love. And as we read the script and we're really trying to get, see, you know, what's the difference between the play and the movie and what's, where are the differences?

13:55We might have those sorts of ideas. And I think the way we do it is we say, I'm going to show you someone. We have auditions today for Glinda and Elphaba today, but I'm going to bring a couple of people in that I don't know if they're going to be a fit there, but they're really interesting and they feel like they would be in the world of Oz. And so like, let's just take a look and see what we think. Yeah, that's one of the evaluation factors that the Academy is going to mention to people in judging the casting Oscar is whether the look and feel of the period casting or the fantasy casting, those are all factors when you are putting together the movie is do these people look like they're of this world?

14:38Oh, definitely. And one of the things we got to do in London, was have this massive dance call because we knew we'd need hundreds of dancers. And Christopher Scott and I talked in the beginning, you know, I'd say if someone just has a look or a way they move that's just interesting, I'm going to create this character pile. And I might read those people, like read them for small parts or force you to call them back and see if they could do a different style of dance where they might fit somewhere else in the movie. And he was fully, I mean, we've worked together a lot. I love working with him. He was so down.

15:08He was like, let's absolutely. And then I can scan their resume in a more deep way than I can when I'm initially setting up 70 dancers every two hours for a week. I sometimes have to just do volume. Like, yes, say yes, get them in. But then after that, I might dig deep and go, oh, this person's actually, as well as being a great dancer, also is an actor. So let's bring them in when we do Shen Shen and Fanny. You know, those kinds of parts or whatever. I asked this of Denise last year. She had a good answer. And I thought I would pose it to you. Agents. a lot of agents listen to the show. What do they do that works?

15:44What do they do that you find super annoying? And how can a representative, an agent or a manager break through and say, I have a client who you do not know, but is perfect for Elphaba or whatever. I love agents, number one, because we do so much business together. The ones that just take you their entire client list. The ones I like, I love. Here are my clients that I would like you to evaluate. please let me know if you are interested in any of them. No, that's the biggest problem is what's starting to happen is a cut and paste. And I know the assistants are doing and it's not the agent. Or AI.

16:18They have their AI assistant just bombarding casting. Right, where it's like, this person is so perfect for blonde bartender, any gender, any ethnicity. You're just like, oh, really? What stands out to you about them? Yeah, tell me exactly. Exactly. So we get a lot of that, which fills our inboxes to a point that are almost, Like we just have to delete it because we can't even find our real emails. But when someone has an actual pitch, you know, I did Tracker and we were looking, wanting to do some authentic casting. Yeah. And someone wrote me and was like, do you know, Abby McInerney, she's this Chicago improv person, but they, her first, you know, thing she did got, you know, she wrote a pilot that got produced and was in, you know, went to Sundance and became a show on Showtime.

17:03Now that's a pitch. And so I wanted to meet her immediately. And she, of course, got cast in the show. And so that, to me, is very exciting. It's just rarer and rarer. And why is it rarer? Like, is it just because it's a volume business and people are so desperate to get any actor through the door that they're just going to do whatever? Peak television put us into a situation where there was so much opportunity for breakouts because there were so many shows being produced at once that a lot of the established actors were booked on shows. And there was a spaghetti being thrown at the wall system that I wish we could leave behind along with, you know, forget about that.

17:41It worked then. Your non-actors got small parts. Your actors who are okay got guest stars. And now that's harder now. So please focus on your good actors. Yeah, you've done a lot of television. You worked with Ryan Murphy a lot. he gets a lot of attention for his cast and some of the, not just stunt, but a lot of the interesting casting choices. Do you attribute that to his desire to be loud and attention grabbing? Is that a mandate when he comes in and says, what are we going to do on this project to get attention for this cast? I, first of all, have to say, I love working with Ryan and I'm not saying You have to say that.

18:22Yes, you do. No, I don't have to say it because I'm going to reframe what you just said and how it feels to me so that you can understand why I love working with him. He wants to be inspired. And if I send him a list and he's like, Tiff, I just am not inspired. That's the conversation. So then I really can. And sometimes you're working very fast. So you're sort of like, okay. And so I have to kind of try to get into his brain and think, who would he get excited about? And that's the fun part. And I think one of the reasons that like in the last two years of working with him, I've cast like four of my bucket list actors that I didn't know if I'd ever get to cast.

18:58Like Leslie Manville and Catherine Hunter and Rebecca Hall and Tayana Taylor. So it's something where it's like I'm trying to think what would get me excited if I saw a deadline article about this announcement? Like me personally as a cast director makes me go. So I start there, obviously. And then sometimes Ryan is like, you know, he's really direct and I enjoy that where he'll say, not for me. Or he gets excited. Or I would really like to have Kim Kardashian as the center of my show. Can you make that happen? Well, that's not casting. There's a difference. He created that show with Kim. That's true.

19:35It's like, you know, going into Moana that you've got Dwayne Johnson and then you got to figure out everybody else. Right. Well, that's most things. Most things start with a green light. That's what makes Wicked really fun is that we had a green light and we're given a very open casting process. How accurate was the casting episode of the studio? Did you watch that? I loved it. I did. I loved it. I thought it was. First, it's too black. Then it's not black enough. Then it's mixed race. And then everything is racist. Yeah. I thought it hit some really fun things. Although I will say, I don't think we had a casting director actually at those meetings.

20:12So I can't speak to like, we have those kinds of meetings, but I have a feeling that the final conversation is probably pretty accurate.

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21:46Unlock a better way to make with Adobe Firefly. I want to get back to this, the big franchise tentpoles. What gets you excited about casting one of these? Is it the discovery process? It is a creative process. So there's nothing that beats just actually being in the room with the director and producer and the actor and everyone collaborating and realizing you've got it, right? and that this person's life is going to change. Yeah. I can tell you someone I'm excited about. A young man named Nicholas Galatine has auditioned for me. He-Man, he's He-Man. I know. And he was always fantastic, always made it to the end.

22:23And for whatever reason, he doesn't get the part, but he's excellent. And when we did The Idea of You, I would say that they had a real short list of people they were interested in seeing. And we were able to put him on the list. and they had done Red, White, and Royal Blue. So they were like, oh, actually we're okay with Nick Bliss. I mean, he's not on our short list, but - That's Amazon, correct? Yeah, Amazon. And then we just knew it should be him because he's perfect for that part. And he is enormously talented, terrific singer, really terrific singer and wonderful actor and just a dreamboat.

23:00And so when I saw he got He-Man and like other things that are coming out, I was just thrilled when he got the idea of you and people watched it, because that's a big thing. Matthew, sometimes you cast someone and then people don't watch the thing. And so you still experience that excitement though when they were cast. Yeah, and I imagine a lot of times you feel that way. Something blocks the process, whether it's the studio or the director not agreeing with you or the budget not being able to accommodate someone or the dreaded scheduling conflicts? Scheduling is usually number one. Especially in the peak TV era.

23:41I mean, it was crazy the stuff that people were doing, flying all over the world to do five shows a year. Probably less of that now. I always say they shoot every day. They want to shoot every day. I mean, that's why we're so excited too about Jonathan Bailey, because that one was really blocked for a minute. Me and Duncan Millership. That's why I have to say, I love the agent's manager sometimes because we don't give up. Yeah, was he a fight to get into Wicked? Just from a schedule because he was doing Fellow Travelers and Bridgerton season three at the same time. Thank God not season two. That would have been impossible.

24:11But I'm so happy for him right now because there was probably three months where he was making himself sick, working every day, flying all over and making it happen. Best audition of all time. I hate to say it, but I will say it on this one because it feels like I'm just being cheesy. But honestly, Ariana Grande for Wicked, because of where it started and where we went, was so incredible. What does that mean? Well, I think people know and talk about it. When she started, she came in very much in, you know, kind of the ponytail and the makeup and stuff that we expect from Ariana Grande, the pop star.

24:48And she came in with that. And you could still feel the, you know, the humor and stuff. But it was not clear because it's distracting almost, right? Like that persona. And so we really kind of asked her, can you come back and drop all that and come in? And she came in many times and then cameraed and came back. And so just that process and her commitment to the audition, her preparation, and then also ours. Like, what do we need to see next? When she comes in, we need to try to work on this part or do we need to get new material? Like, it's a real creative process where you're trying to see how the fit is.