An actor from Toms River, N.J., is suing a major New York casting office and the Screen Actors Guild, alleging that employees of the office solicited bribes in exchange for work and that when the actor notified SAG of the situation, union officials did not do enough to stop it.
SAG's Codified Basic Agreement for Independent Producers forbids anyone with the power to hire background actors from demanding or accepting remuneration beyond "normal courtesy," such as small gifts during the holidays. However, actor Caroline S. Mazzone alleges that, over the course of a year beginning in late 2001, she gave several gifts worth between $200 and $300 to employees of Grant Wilfley Casting after they suggested to her that it would help her get more work.
According to Mazzone, when she stopped giving the gifts and confronted Grant Wilfley, owner of Grant Wilfley Casting, about his employees' actions, he ignored her claims, at which point the number of jobs she booked through his office tailed off, then stopped altogether. Since late 2004, she says, she has not gotten any work through Grant Wilfley Casting, a prominent casting office that hires background actors for television shows such as the three Law & Order series and The Sopranos, as well as major studio films such as Catch Me If You Can and The Departed.
The federal lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey in December 2005, names 13 defendants. Mazzone accuses Wilfley and his five employees of commercial bribery under the civil code of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. She is also suing Grant Wilfley Casting, SAG, Warner Bros. Entertainment, NBC Universal Television, and three smaller casting offices -- Extra Extra Casting, Kee Casting, and Hungry Man Productions -- for breach of contract, asserting they violated the terms of all relevant contracts by ignoring the rules against casting background actors through personal favoritism or, in the case of SAG, by not doing enough to stop it.
The case is currently in the discovery phase; no trial date has been set. Wilfley and his attorney, as well as counsel for Warner Bros., NBC, Extra Extra Casting, and Hungry Man Productions, have not returned calls from Back Stage seeking comment.
Pamm Fair, SAG's deputy national executive director for policy and strategic planning, said, "We believe her claims are without merit, and we are vigorously defending her lawsuit. But we do not want to comment beyond that on pending litigation."
Attorney Ronald Coleman represents three of the Wilfley employees: Jennifer D. Sabel, Reba Massey, and Ross Ryman. "The allegations of demands are ridiculous," he said. "There were never any demands, and the handful of trinkets and used merchandise she ultimately did deposit with them were either worthless or far from the sort of thing that would have made any of my clients act in an unethical manner."
An attorney for a fourth Wilfley employee, Ana Maniscalco-Blasi, did not return Back Stage's call seeking comment. Kristian Sorge, the fifth Wilfley staffer, could not be reached.
Dennis Gleason, attorney for Kee Casting, describes himself as "perplexed" by his client's involvement with the suit. "Mazzone argues that Kee Casting is an agent for Warner Bros. and NBC and that Kee Casting refuses to hire Mazzone as a background actor," Gleason said. "Shortly before the lawsuit, Kee had no idea who Caroline Mazzone was.... We've been dragged into this without any real basis.... [Kee doesn't] act as an agent for any of the production companies."
Promises to Keep
Carl Salisbury, Mazzone's attorney, said there are "promises that are made" in SAG contracts that background actors will not be cast on the basis of personal favoritism. "They are not keeping their promises," he said of Wilfley, SAG, and the other defendants.
Mazzone's lawsuit resurrects long-standing rumors of illicit transactions between actors and the gatekeepers of their industry, though such allegations usually remain unconfirmed or prove unfounded. But the scope of Mazzone's suit, which names some of the more prominent players in the entertainment industry, makes her claims difficult to ignore.
Two actors who have been deposed in the suit and requested anonymity told Back Stage that in their experiences the general thrust of Mazzone's claims is true: In New York, some actors pay to play, and those who don't are afraid to speak up. One of the actors said a colleague told him he had paid $50 to someone in Wilfley's office; when the actor still wasn't getting enough work, he wondered if he had paid too little.
The same actor witnessed a background performer tell an assistant director on the now-canceled series Third Watch, whose extras were cast by Grant Wilfley Casting, that five of his friends needed work. "That's 75 bucks apiece," the A.D. said. A third actor said in an interview with Back Stage that he witnessed the same conversation but recalled the price as "$20 a head."
Playing Santa
In December 2001, Mazzone was a nonunion actor. While working in a Bronx jail as an extra on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, she got what every nonunion actor hopes for: the first of three waivers she would need to become a member of SAG. A production assistant told her the news while she was sitting in the holding area with half a dozen other actors.
Mazzone recalled that when she asked who approved the waiver, the assistant told her, "I think it came from casting." After the P.A. left, an actor told her, "You have to get them a gift." The "them" in this case was Ryman, who was working for Wilfley at the time. Mazzone had intended to give the gift to another staffer, but Ryman called to say he had arranged the waiver.
A short time later, Mazzone said, she gave him a $200 telescope, and when Ryman accepted it, he told her, "You can expect to be working a lot more on SVU."
Within days of giving the telescope to Ryman, Mazzone understood that other Wilfley employees felt "hurt and left out" because they hadn't received presents as well. Sometime after Christmas, Mazzone said, she dropped off several gifts worth at least $200 each, including an electronic keyboard for Sorge, a gold bracelet for Maniscalco-Blasi, and a string of Akoya pearls for Massey. Mazzone got a lot of work in 2002, earning more than $14,000, with the majority of it coming through Wilfley's office. By February of that year, she had three waivers and a SAG card, a process that often takes years. She was getting so much work, she said, "I could have worked five days a week if I wanted to."
During that year, Wilfley employees became more assertive in asking for things, Mazzone said, adding that Massey once called to say she had an anniversary coming up. By the time Christmas rolled around, Mazzone felt compelled to play Santa again, even though she had grown disgusted with her own behavior.
She did it anyway, she said, "because I didn't want to be left out of the rotation." Among the presents she gave, she said, was $200 in cash to Massey. Coleman denies that Massey took cash from Mazzone.
Talking to Wilfley
A few months into 2003, however, Mazzone had a falling out with two Wilfley staffers and stopped getting work. She eventually went to Wilfley to complain and told him about all the presents. Mazzone said he dismissed her complaints as inconsequential, even though he told her later in the conversation that Ryman had been fired for demanding gifts from actors. Coleman, Ryman's attorney, denied the charge and said Ryman left Wilfley "under his own power."
Mazzone said that at the end of her conversation with the casting director, he all but dared her to take her case to SAG. "They won't do anything," she recalled him saying.
Mazzone went to SAG anyway and began a series of conversations with Ron Bennett, who at the time was the union's manager of television and theatrical contracts in New York. Mazzone told him there was a relatively small group of actors who were getting a disproportionate share of the background work on Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Third Watch.
"I understand you want to have the same actors in the precincts to maintain continuity," she said. "But should the same actors who are playing cops on Third Watch be playing cops on SVU?"
Mazzone said she gave SAG a list of 50 to 60 actors she believed were working on all three shows most weeks and said her claims could be proved or dismissed by examining the union's pension and health records. SAG officials at first balked, then said they would investigate.
However, according to Mazzone, Bennett said in his December deposition that he examined records for The Stepford Wives and other movies but not for the TV shows in question. The depositions for the case have not been made public, but a source familiar with their contents confirmed Mazzone's statement.
Seeking Damages
Mazzone contends that because she spoke out, she has lost work and suffered potentially long-term damage to her career. But the pension and health records that Mazzone gave to Back Stage show a cloudier picture. Between 2002 and 2005, her income dropped more than 74 percent, with the most significant falloff coming in 2004 and 2005, after her confrontation with Wilfley. In 2006, however, Mazzone had her best year by far, with her income 67 percent higher than it was in 2002, her previous best year.
"We don't know what she was damaged by," said Gleason, the attorney for Kee Casting. Said Coleman, "As a lawyer, the first thing you look for is damages. Where are the damages?"
When asked about the cause of her windfall in 2006, Mazzone offered two possible explanations: "Maybe casting directors are scared of me now," she said; she added that for several multiweek jobs that year, she was cast by the project's director and not through a casting office.
Mazzone, who said it has been her lifelong ambition to be an actor, was asked why she was putting so much energy into her suit rather than her craft. "As I got involved in this, I never had any intention of suing them," she said. "It became like a quest.... In my tenacious stupidity, I believe that I was right. I believe that it was something I had to prove."