It’s easy to picture an audition room for a big film or a Broadway play, but the process of auditioning and casting a commercial can be just as rigorous, and there are CDs dedicated to the genre which even has its own association for those working in it.
Justin Radley has served as the president of the Commercial Casting Directors’ Association (CCDA) for the last year while working as a CD and partner at ASG Casting. Backstage talked to Radley about how he became a casting director, his most exciting projects, and what aspiring commercial actors need to know about getting cast.
What kind of work do you cast?
I’ve worked on thousands of commercials. I had the opportunity to work on a spot for the Coen Brothers for the Super Bowl. [It was] a Mercedes commercial with Peter Fonda and a bunch of bikers, that was a lot of fun. It was really great to meet Joel and Ethan, attend the callbacks, and to see how they work.
What’s your involvement with CCDA?
The CCDA is a business league, it's an organization of commercial casting directors, similar to CSA.
READ: What You Need to Know to Book a Commercial
What should actors know about CCDA? How do actors fit in with what you do?
For the past couple of years, there has been a trend in advertisers choosing to use nonunion talent instead of professional performers. Although the CCDA is not a union, we are definitely pro-union for actors. We’re for the working actor, and we’re for actors making a living wage. We’re on the front lines of production, so any chance we have to get a nonunion job to turn union, we’ll take whatever steps we can to do that. And a number of the casting directors in CCDA have been successful in turning nonunion jobs from nonunion to union.
Another thing I want everybody to know is about our charitable fundraising efforts. For the last two years, we’ve done an annual charity fundraising event. So coming up in 2019, it will be our third annual fundraiser and actors should look out for donation boxes in casting studios all around town. As casting directors, we can extend our reach through actors and it’s so easy to just remind them, Hey, if you’re coming to our place for an audition, please, bring a book for a child. The support of the acting community, as well as the talent agents, have made it very successful.
What advice to do you have for aspiring commercial actors?
The most important thing for aspiring actors is to treat it like a true profession because that’s what it is. Every audition you go in is a job interview, so show up prepared.
What’s your background in casting?
I have been in casting for about 20 years and I became a partner at ASG Casting in 2004. I had worked in production in Chicago for several years after college and moved out to Los Angeles and applied for a job in the Hollywood Reporter to be an office manager in a casting studio. I had no idea this whole industry even existed. The whole time I was working in production in Chicago [on indie films and commercials], I never gave a second thought to where the actors came from. I didn’t know there was this whole process of finding the best actors for the role. Then I got a job managing a busy casting facility and that was my introduction to casting. It was just eye-opening; I fell in love with it.
