Coming to CBS: How I Met Your Mother
In CBS' new sitcom How I Met Your Mother, premiering Sept. 19, Bob Saget narrates as Ted, a man in 2035 who has decided to tell his children the whole story of his search for love 30 years earlier. The show is set in present-day New York, where Ted, having learned that his best friend Marshall is planning to marry, decides it's time that he, too, find the love of his life and settle down.
Casting director Megan Branman explains that Josh Radnor (The Court) was an easy choice for the younger Ted. "He's that menschy kind of guy that women love. As he was reading it, I was just transfixed by his performance, because he was so absolutely sincere and wonderful and heartfelt, and the humor came through. He was the first person we read for Ted," says Branman.
Ted's friends include Marshall, played by Jason Segel (Freaks and Geeks), and Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D.). Branman explains, "Very often when you're casting, you're trying on a lot of different things because you need to find a way to make these people come alive. There are some writers who are just wonderful and are really good at capturing the essence of a character. There are others with whom the character comes more out of the person playing it and what they bring to it. It was so clear in this script who these people were. In reading it, you just knew who should be playing the parts."
Cobie Smulders (Veritas: The Quest), plays Ted's love interest, and Alyson Hannigan (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is Marshall's somewhat foulmouthed fiancee. "My background is in art, painting, and drawing," says Branman. "I approach casting in a similar way, looking at the entire composition. When one element comes into it, it's going to affect other elements. So as people are cast, that will affect who you look at to fill out the whole painting."
When asked about casting opportunities, Branman says her main goal was diversity. "New York is a melting pot, and there are people from all kinds of different cultures, of all ethnicities, and I want the show to reflect that," she explains. "When I have sessions on roles, I have been bringing in people of all ethnicities, because that is the truth. And that's the world. I want it to reflect our world."
Preparation for roles is easier these days, points out Branman. "Anyone who is coming in to audition can just go online to CBS' website, and [it has] previews of all [its] new shows. So you can get a sense of the feel of the show and who the characters are. I like it when people who come in don't push. They come in and just keep it real, keep it natural. Yes, this is comedy, but, again, don't push the jokes. Don't turn something into a caricature. This show is more grounded in reality, and that's what an actor should bring in when they come in to audition for it."
--Sarah McKinley Oakes
Coming to the WB: Supernatural
"It's Route 66 meets The X Files," says executive producer Robert Singer of the WB's new thriller-drama, Supernatural.
Created by Eric Kripke (writer-producer of Boogeyman), the show follows brothers Dean and Sam Winchester on a terrifying backwoods journey to find their missing father, John, who mysteriously disappeared pursuing the evil supernatural forces that killed their mother. Once the brothers embark on their quest, their father's clues lead them to towns chock-full of sinister paranormal figures.
"We definitely want it to feel real," says Singer. Rooted in urban legends and folklore, all the supernatural beings on the show can be easily researched or "googled"; that accessibility was one of Kripke's requirements for the show. Early in their journey, Sam and Dean encounter the mythical figures of the Lady in White, a ghostly hitchhiker who lures young men to their deaths, the infamous Bloody Mary, and the Native American phantom-beast, Wendigo.
"The stories are somewhat guest-star driven because our guys are always sort of strangers to whatever they're coming into," says Singer. "It's not like they have a home base. Their home base is a '67 Chevy Impala."
Though their journey leads them through locales such as the Colorado wilderness, Nebraska farmlands, and isolated Wisconsin lakes, Supernatural is shot in Vancouver. The majority of the roles are cast out of Canada, but Los Angeles–based casting director Robert J. Ulrich casts about one to three substantial guest-starring roles per episode. He accepts submissions from agents and managers and does not allow walk-ins. The casting trend for the show thus far has been women ages 18–30 and men mid-40s to late 50s.
"The show has two young male leads, so the chances that we'll continue casting beautiful young girls are probably very good," says Ulrich. "For the first episode that we cast, we actually found a young 15-year-old boy and Taft-Hartleyed him. It was very exciting." Ulrich, however, did not cast the two male leads.
Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles play the two brothers--the only regular cast members. No stranger to horror and teen genre fare, Padalecki appeared in House of Wax alongside Paris Hilton and with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in New York Minute. In his breakthrough role, Padalecki played Dean Forester on Gilmore Girls. Ackles has WB ties, as well, playing Lana's love interest on Smallville. He also had a recurrent role on Dawson's Creek.
But not everyone associated with the project has WB ties. McG, best known for directing the popular Charlie's Angels franchise, executive produces the project with Kripke and Singer. Kripke initially pitched McG the concept for the show, and his interest attracted producer Peter Johnson and former X Files producer-director David Nutter. Supernatural debuts Sept. 13 at 9 p.m.
"It's a fantastic show," says Ulrich. "It's a wonderful pilot and really fun. I'm lucky as a casting director to have roles being written that have something to them, so that the actors can come in and have something to play. Actors are always better when they have a good scene to play."
--Nicole Kristal
Coming to UPN: Everybody Hates Chris
Chris Rock is the kind of actor-comedian censors love to hate. His new half-hour series, which premieres Sept. 22, is inspired by his experiences living in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., in the 1980s: The raucous, heartwarming comedy loosely chronicles his experiences attending a predominantly Caucasian junior high school.
Rock and writing partner Ali LeRoi have managed to keep an edgy comedic voice, which sets the program apart from formulaic predecessors. Some critics have compared it to The Wonder Years and that other popular African-American family comedy, The Cosby Show. Like Cosby, Everybody Hates Chris depicts African Americans in a functioning two-parent household with gainful employment, but the similarities end there.
Casting directors Kim Coleman and Victoria Thomas were charged with finding the right actors to bring Rock's childhood to life. The casting team auditioned many actors for the two parent roles but found that one factor made some actors more believable. "We had a lot of people read for the parents' roles, but we found that the actors who didn't have kids weren't believable," says Thomas.
Sitcom veteran Tichina Arnold's (Martin, Big Momma's House) experiences with her own family added to her portrayal of Rochelle, Chris' sassy but firm mother. "Tichina is a mother. She has experience balancing work and home. That rang true when she read that character," says Coleman. Family man and actor Terry Crews (The Longest Yard, White Chicks) brought his parenting experience to Julius, the hard-working, penny-pinching patriarch of the Rock household.
Coleman and Thomas looked all over the country to find the right kids for the cast. "For the kids, we went to the East Coast, down South, and in L.A., as well. In the end, we found the perfect kid to play [Chris]," says Coleman: 12-year-old New Yorker Tyler James Williams. No stranger to the business, Williams has been acting on television and in commercials since he was 4. Early in his career, he was featured on Sesame Street and as the voice of Bobby on Bill Cosby's animated childrens program Little Bill.
Tequan Richmond (Ray) plays Chris' younger, taller, and well-assured brother Drew. Imani Hakim stars as Tonya, Chris' bratty younger sister, the overindulged baby of the family. Vincent Martella plays Greg, Chris' best friend and fellow social outcast at Corleone Junior High. During the season, Coleman and Thomas expect there to be more guest-star roles for child- and adult actors of all ethnicities to fill in the roles of students, teachers, and neighbors. They will be looking specifically for realistic New York types to add to the authenticity of series, which shoots in L.A. Actors are strongly discouraged from blindly submitting themselves and instead should make inquiries through their agents.
--Nicole Porter
Coming to Showtime: Weeds
It seems easy to compare Showtime's edgy new series Weeds, about "dealing in the suburbs," to Desperate Housewives. But Weeds was shot before the ABC hit ever aired. The half-hour dramedy revolves around a recently widowed mother of two who must sell pot to maintain her upper-middle class lifestyle. The dark, subversive series toys with the myth of suburbia--the idea that everyone in the fictional town Agrestic, Calif., is normal and perfect. Of course they're all far from that.
Emmy-winning series creator Jenji Kohan (Tracey Takes On) and consulting producer-director Brian Dannelly (Saved!) say they were influenced by The Shield and The Sopranos, in which people function outside of society's moral code but still maintain everyday lives. Kohan, who has also written for Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls, Will & Grace, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, wanted to do a show that focused on the gray areas of human nature, rather than on good and evil stories we're accustomed to on television.
"I grew up in the suburbs of Southern California, and I remember being at the home of a high school friend, who had a very juvenile-type mother, and finding stacks of bagged pot in the vegetable crisper inside the fridge," Kohan has said. "I became obsessed with the notion of people operating in gray areas, which I feel is much more like real life. It's where the comedy and drama lie, and where your heroes function outside conventional morality and must then develop a set of moral codes and boundaries of their own."
The series stars Emmy- and Tony-winning Mary-Louise Parker (Angels in America) as Nancy Botwin, a decent mom who finds it increasingly difficult to protect her illegal secret, at one point using her Range Rover and wedding ring as collateral for more marijuana. Among the flawed, twisted characters is Celia (Elizabeth Perkins), a calculating, superficial PTA mom who calls her overweight young daughter "Isabelly" and in one episode secretly feeds her chocolate laxatives.
Then there's Tonye Patano (The Hurricane) as Heylia, the matriarch of an inner-city family who serves as Nancy's pot supplier. Moments of sexual tension are provided by Heylia's son, played by Romany Malco, who starred in the VH1 biopic Too Legit: The MC Hammer Story. Parker's Angels in America co-star Justin Kirk plays Nancy's aimless brother-in-law, and Kevin Nealon (Saturday Night Live) rounds out the cast as Nancy's stoner client, accountant, and business adviser.
Casting directors Anya Colloff and Amy McIntyre Britt (Monk, Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) will likely be on the lookout for exaggerated suburban types, PTA moms, teachers, babysitters, schoolchildren, neighborhood teens, drug dealers, stoners, and inner-city types. A quick delivery will be required for this show's sardonic, biting humor. Actors also must be comfortable with the drug-friendly subject matter of each episode. Weeds is certain to raise eyebrows and divide audiences, because for many it's difficult not to judge a drug-dealing soccer mom. Regardless of how the show is received, Showtime's creative freedom is sure to open the floodgates for delicious, envelope-pushing characters.
--Cassie Carpenter
Coming to Showtime: Barbershop the Series
According to casting director Robi Reed, it is creator John Ridley's insightful humor that will set Barbershop the Series apart from the films and anything else on television this season. She says the show has plenty of fodder for "water cooler" talk and deals with universal human issues through politics, relationships, and life.
Reed was given the difficult task of casting new faces for television while staying true to the original features. For more than 20 years, Reed has built her reputation in Hollywood for casting true-to-life African-American characters in films such as Malcolm X, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Soul Food. Yet she found casting for this project a challenge. "Once you have personalities in roles, you know, it's always hard to try to re-create it and not cast the actor or personality," she says. "[We needed] somebody who would bring their own kind of flavor or personality."
Personality was a main factor in casting the role of Calvin, who was played in the film by the show's executive producer Ice Cube. For months Reed looked for a person whose personality fit the character. Omar Gooding (Baby Boy, The Gospel) was cast as Calvin. "I guess it was his role all along. We had already gone to network once before we finally saw and cast him," says Reed.
Kismet had a little to do with casting accomplished New York stage actor Toni Trucks as Terri, the ornery female barber. Ridley had seen Trucks in New York and loved her talent, but not everyone was ready to let go of rapper-actor Eve's interpretation of the character. "It was hard not to think of her when watching Toni, because they are so different," says Reed. Trucks' standout talent and charisma won her the role.
Rounding out the eight-person ensemble is a mix of new and veteran actors. Eddie, the inflexible old-school barber, is played by veteran character actor Barry Shabaka Henley (Four Brothers, Collateral). Yinka, the naive Nigerian immigrant, is played by The Wire's Gbenga Akinnagbe. Wes Chatham (The Fighting Temptations) portrays Isaac, the only Caucasian barber. Leslie Elliard, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, is local politician Jimmy. Anna Brown (If Tomorrow Comes, Torque) plays Jen, Calvin's sweet but manipulative wife. Romadal, a new character in the series, is played by Dan White (Ali, Boomtown).
According to Reed, the show will have 10–15 adult guest-star opportunities for actors of all ethnicities, as long as they are New York types, because Ridley's vision of Barbershop the Series is not Afrocentric and favors issues that include the whole world. "We've used everyone in this show so far--white, black, Asian, Indian, African--everyone is represented," she says.
--Nicole Porter
Coming to NBC: My Name is Earl
The unconventional premise of NBC's new comedy My Name Is Earl could easily be interpreted by some as over-the-top. That's why creator and executive producer Greg Garcia says it was important to find actors who "felt real."
"I think it would be easy to take this material and this world and turn it into a cartoon, and I don't want it to be a cartoon," he says. "Obviously a lot of it is larger than life. In my mind Raising Arizona is kind of a bar of how cartoony we want it to be. Things were larger than life in that [film], but they still had a real element to them."
The series, which premieres Sept. 20, follows down-on-his-luck Earl (Jason Lee), a ne'er-do-well who wins the lottery, has an epiphany, and sets out to right all the wrongs he's committed in his past. Lee, best-known for his roles in Kevin Smith films such as Chasing Amy, was on Garcia's dream cast list, but he'd heard the actor wasn't interested in doing TV. "We had a ton of people read for the role," he says. "We just were having trouble finding the right, exact person, and then Jason's manager had read it, and she loved it and she got it to him. I heard he liked it. And then we had a great meeting, and a week later, he was doing the show."
The rest of the show's ensemble is similarly distinctive. Ethan Suplee (Without a Paddle) had the hilarious, understated quality needed for Earl's slacker brother, and Jaime Pressly (Not Another Teen Movie) nailed her audition for the part of Earl's vindictive ex-wife in one line. Eddie Steeples (Torque), who plays the laid-back owner of Earl's local watering hole, was called in based on his buzz-generating turn as the "Rubberband Man" in a series of OfficeMax commercials and "knocked it out of the park," says Garcia. The role of Catalina, a sharp-tongued hotel maid, went to relative newcomer Nadine Velazquez (The Bold and the Beautiful). "She hadn't done a ton of stuff; she's relatively new," says Garcia. "She was a preread for our casting people, and then they brought her to us, and we were blown away. There was just a real sense of realism with her that we really liked."
Given that Earl is righting a new wrong every week, there should be ample opportunities for guest cast. "I've worked on a lot of shows in the past where you'll have an episode where there's no guest cast at all. But this show will never be a show where it's just the regulars. We're always going to have a very big guest role, because [Earl is] always crossing something off of his list," says Garcia. "There will always be a meaty part for somebody."
Garcia is looking to populate Earl's world with unusual types that have the "real" quality he mentioned. "I think you're going see some people that don't get their shot on Friends," he says, chuckling. "Our first shot this morning was a one-legged woman with a shotgun. We've had some interesting casting sessions already. I think we're looking for very charactery, gritty folks in this thing."
--Sarah Kuhn
Coming to FOX: Reunion
Time is the main gimmick of Reunion, the one-hour murder mystery-drama set to follow The O.C. Thursday nights on FOX, starting Sept. 8. The first episode begins in 2005 at the funeral of one of the six main characters, the death being investigated by Detective Marjorino, played by Mathew St. Patrick (Six Feet Under). Before the identity of the corpse is revealed, the show jumps back 20 years, to 1986 and the graduation of six high school students. Each episode, 20 in all, takes place one year after the last, the relationships and twists and turns revealed slowly, culminating in the present day with the murdered and murderer finally uncovered.
The six friends, as we first meet them in 1986, are Will Estes (U-571, American Dreams) as Will, a small-town boy with big-town dreams whose athletic scholarship is going to help him be the first in his family to attend college; Sean Faris (Life as We Know It) as Craig, the handsome rich kid set for the Ivy League; Alexa Davalos (The Chronicles of Riddick) as Samantha, Craig's ambitious and beautiful girlfriend; Amanda Righetti (North Shore) as Jenna, the sensual, spoiled wannabe actor; Dave Annable (Little Black Book) as Aaron, a nerdy guy whose main characteristic seems to be his obsession with Jenna; and Chyler Leigh (That '80s Show) as Carla, an innocent and awkward girl and the only one of the six not interested in moving away as soon as possible.
Everyone's plans go awry, and the intensity levels go up starting with the second episode, building as the detective, interviewing the friends in 2005, reveals who is dead and who is to blame. Stories of marriage and scandal, love, and loss fill each episode as the mystery slowly unravels. If the show is popular enough to continue next season, it will be about a new group of people, some small roles from the first season possibly becoming larger characters in the new story.
Set in the small town Bedford, N.Y., the show will no doubt need the standard small-town characters as background and small roles. Because each episode takes place in a different year, pop culture references and wardrobes are going to be changing fast. Actors should do their research and remember that while the looks and dress codes of 1988–93 may seem identical now, the styles, colors, and hairdos were very different year to year. The show is being written and executive produced by Jon Harmon Feldman, the creator and executive producer of FOX's Tru Calling. The pilot's producer, Steve Pearlman, told TV.Com he got the idea for the show when he attended his 20th high school reunion a couple of years ago.
--Sarah McKinley Oakes
Coming to FOX: Prison Break
"The first couple of days when we started filming, the actors were all depressed, and we couldn't kind of work out why," Prison Break star Dominic Purcell says in a video on the Fox website. "Then we kind of figured out that we're in a real-life prison, so the energy of the place is intense and dark. It's not a functioning prison anymore, but it's one of America's oldest; Joliet, in Chicago." The authentic feeling of despair permeates the 150-year-old walls and does its part to keep the cast in character.
It takes a tough, versatile ensemble to ground the daring new mystery-drama written in the same fast pace as another FOX series, 24. Wentworth Miller (The Human Stain) and Purcell (John Doe) play brothers behind bars. Miller's character--structural engineer Michael Scofield--intentionally gets himself incarcerated so he can break his innocent brother out; Purcell's Lincoln is on death row for killing the vice president's brother. Miller endures weekly five-hour applications of a temporary tattoo covering his character's chest, arms, and back, conveniently concealing the prison blueprints.
Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) directs the remarkable pilot and also serves as executive producer. Series creator Paul Scheuring (A Man Apart) says both leads were cast very last-minute, and it was pure luck that the two actors share a resemblance. Robin Tunney (The Craft) portrays Michael's lawyer and Lincoln's ex-girlfriend, and Swedish actor Peter Stormare (Fargo, Constantine) was an inspired, if random, choice to play an Italian mob boss.
"It gives the character a very unique spin," says Scheuring. "Every little word or nuance that comes out of [Stormare] is just gold. There will be some kind of unusual choices like that. I would say that we're trying to turn some of the paradigms of the prison narrative on their head. It was very important that the warden [played by Stacy Keach] not be the draconian overseer who is the arch-evil bad guy, but rather someone who develops into a surrogate father for our protagonist."
Scheuring promises actors there will be many opportunities to guest star as inmates, guards, lawyers, political types, or people involved with the conspiracy. The pilot was cast by John Papsidera and Wendy O'Brien, but Scott Genkinger and Junie Lowry-Johnson have taken over casting the show. It's so character-intensive that producers often fly L.A. talent that appear in one or more episodes to Illinois. The smaller roles will be filled in by Chicago casting director Claire Simon--at least for the first season.
Actors who are fans of The Great Escape and The Shawshank Redemption will find ample opportunities in this male-dominated series, premiering Aug. 29. When asked if he ever writes with specific actors in mind, Scheuring confesses that the roles all come from archetypes. "It's kind of just the character, and then whoever walks in the room and kind of reads it right, you're, like, 'Wow, that's the person.'"
--Cassie Carpenter
Coming to ABC: Commander in Chief
Rod Lurie, the former film critic who made a name for himself in film when he wrote and helmed the Oscar-nominated political drama The Contender (2000), is the producer, writer, and director of this season's Commander in Chief, premiering Sept. 27, in which Geena Davis plays Mackenzie Allen, the first female president of the United States. "I love that world so, so very much," says Lurie of the machinations and intrigues within the Beltway. Due to the Oval Office overlap, inevitable comparisons to The West Wing will be drawn, but Lurie, who admires The West Wing enormously, insists they are cut from different cloth. "For one thing, our president is taller," he jokes before explaining that Commander in Chief focuses much more on the job's effects on the family than it does on the job. Luries says, "Purely in terms of structure, we're more like The Sopranos, in the sense that Tony Soprano is like the president of the Mafia, he deals with the enormous workload, and then he has to come home, and Mr. Tough Guy is all of a sudden is a dad and husband who has to deal with his tough wife."
Scoring Davis was a coup for Lurie, as he was unable to even make her an offer until her contract with another network was up, on Feb. 28. Lurie gambled on a yes, spent the money on the set in Richmond, Va., where the pilot was shot (the show is being shot at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood), and installed a crew even though he had no lead. On the afternoon of Feb. 28, he got his yes, after which, he says, "We were awful relieved." He also feels privileged to be working with an actor who "really fell in love with the words, [and] who thinks it's an important show."
The family dynamic central to the show will allow casting opportunities unusual in political dramas, because the president and her husband have three children still living at home. Lurie says there will be "tons of opportunities for teenagers and for very young kids because the little girl [6-year-old Amy, played by Jasmine Anthony] is going to have her friends she deals with," in addition to the social network of the teenage fraternal twins, Rebecca (Caitlin Wachs) and Horace (Matt Lanter). There will also be an effort to make the White House as diversified as possible, including a black chief of staff (Harry J. Lennix) and an Asian attorney general. "This is a show that is trying to break people," Lurie says. "I've got three people in the cast who were waiters that I ran into over the past few months. Sometimes I'd just ask, 'Are you an actor?' One of them is playing the butler for the president, one is playing a Secret Service agent, and one is playing a reporter but has been hired as a stand-in. I love to put a smile on people's faces and get them those jobs." He's quick to add, "I don't want to be bombarded with people bothering me all the time," but, he notes, "I often ask."
--Wenzel Jones