How it's Made: Casting for HBO's Euphoria and Uncut Gems with The Casting Mafia

For these three notable casting scouts all stemming from different regions branching across Ohio, New York, and Minnesota, each have found a profound love for one thing — movies. So while most teenagers were thinking of their prom, college, and dating, for their sake, they were occasionally teaming up with of the most legendary casting agency in America— JV8. From being taken under Jennifer Venditti's wing, they have gone on to cast for amazing projects like Uncut Gems, HBO'S Euphoria, Good Time, White Boy Rick, and more. And for the renowned scouts, casting is more than looking at audition tapes all day— what they find most rewarding is achieved by the beauty in everyday human interaction, the quirk and essence of people, locating the ideal person for a fictional character, and the stories they hear along the way.

For this group, holding the role of a casting agent changes from day to day. "There's no way that any project works." Michele Mansoor mentions. "Detective work is a good comparison because you might be calling people, finding out information on your computer, but you might be going out into the world and seeing what you can see. And seeing where each thing leads you." Abby adds on. On some days, you're enduring people's life stories, finding the best in everyone you meet, or stalking out locations for the next star— each stage in this process might go unnoticed but completes the bigger picture, literally.

"We're dealing with some really special and eccentric people. We're really trying to see what makes that person unique, and why it is that they are who they are. So that's what we're trying to allow to come out when we're interviewing people, or meeting people on the street. We always see if that can lend itself to whatever project we're working on. I think for people, it's always nice to be seen." says Mansoor. "No one is a stranger, what is the rule that you can't talk to some just because you don't know them? The nice thing about being one of us is that I don't do the small talk anymore." she continues. So, being a geek and majoring in the field of "people" continues to work out in their favor and assist in their job.

For The Casting Mafia, there's no set standard on what a star looks like, walks like, or talks like. It's all determined based on the character they're looking for and the alignment they have with the project. "Trying not to have a deep conversation with everyone you see on the street becomes really hard." Abby testifies. Becoming obsessed with human connection and the everyday interaction of real humanity is one of the advantages of this job. So while you may not find the star of the next movie you were looking for, the lesson that are taken from humanity become just as rewarding.

Michele Mansoor on casting Uncut Gems

How it's made:

So, with Uncut Gems,  the link between the Safdie's and JV8 is Eléonore because she's known them for over a decade and worked with them for that long. So she is the connection between like me and Abby and us to the Safdie brothers. And then obviously, I worked for Jen, and so Uncut Gems came to Jen because we all worked on 'Good Time,' and that was the first Safdie project that we all worked on. We did uncut gems in 2018, and I had been working with her since 2014, like religiously, there was barely any break between any work that I did with her. So this was just the next thing. I more so remember her hitting me up for 'good time.' She like left me a voicemail when I was still in college. And she was like, "Hey, there's an interesting project you might want to be a part of." But for [Uncut] 'Gems, it was kind of just a given, this is the next job that I had. And so, I'd known about it for a while because when you have a working relationship with people, you know what their next thing in the distance that you're gonna be working on.

We all attacked it from our different areas. Like us scouts were on the street every day, and it was a massive cast. We looked at it as there's always the two lanes. There's the actor lane and all those people that were coming to the office and auditioning traditionally, and then our lane, which was being out on the street, finding people, and funneling those people into the office for auditions after they passed our eyes. So, we would kind of whittle it down while working with directors who know what they want and who are incredible— you know, they see it once and they know that it's that. You know, you don't have to continue to find options after they've found this person that they, that they recognize as the perfect person for that role.

So then, Eléonore and I were like in the diamond district every single day and obviously in other places too, like going to the Bukharian Jewish center, going to people's houses for Shabbat dinner, going to different temples. But we were in the diamond district every day. And I would say we did the casting for the film, but there's more people to celebrate than just one person. Keith Richards, who is the guy who plays Phil, and ends up, spoiler alert, murdering Adam Sandler at the end. He is someone that I met just like totally randomly on the street. And he was like insane and incredible. I was taking the same route to 47th street every single day, and this one day Jen was kind of like, "we really need to focus on Phil and Nico" who were the kind of Hitman.

And I was like, "I don't know, Abby found the other guy— Nico at a construction site." And I was thinking about like, okay, where are big men? Gyms? Like, I was just trying to come up with these different ideas of where to find a person like this. And I was like, maybe I should go to like the hell's angels, which was like such a stupid idea. So, I walked all the way to the east village. I got outside the door to hell's angels and I just looked at it, and I was like, "eh," I was like, "nah," I just wasn't feeling it for some reason.

And so I walked up to first avenue, and leaning on the L train subway entrance was this guy who was on the phone and he was talking about a funeral. And he had this like incredible voice. Like he was doing him just hanging out there, taking a phone call. So I just watched him finish his phone call and then he kind of just stood there and I was like, 'okay, well I should talk to him because he's amazing.' But I had a moment where I was like discouraged about just the day in general, and like maybe feeling a little like self-pity for not being able to talk myself up to go into the hell's angels. So then I like went up to him and I started talking to him. I was like, "Hey, I'm casting this movie," and he was like really curious. We had a great talk and I was very convinced by him and enamored with him. And I thought he was amazing, like pretty instantly. And then I did an interview with him, and he gave me his phone number, and he was in the midst of switching phones or something weird. And I was like, 'oh God, he's probably gonna be unreachable.' Because that happens too, we find someone amazing and then we can't reach them. And then it's like, 'God, why did I not get a phone number for every one of their family members?'

And, and so he gave me a backup phone number and his phone number. And then like a few days later, like I was scouting, and again someone was like from the office texting me like, "Hey, did you meet a Keith Richards on the street? He just called the office and gave us his phone number." And I was like amazing. Like, that's so great that he was on it enough to be like, here's my phone number. Like, that's crazy. There was something magical about the fact that he took it upon himself to make him findable for us or make it easy to reach him. So then he came in and did an amazing audition. And like, I remember afterward Josh texted me just like 'Keith Richards' in capital letters with a heart. And that was like a summer. That was a whole summer, like two months, three months. But the scouting was probably like a month or two, like straight. And Keith, he just feels like he was that, that there was no way that it couldn't have been him. And like, I just happened to be the lucky person to see him on that day and kind of just like, act as the bridge for like him to walk over to his destiny.
 

Eléonore Hendrickss on casting HBO's Euphoria

How it's made:

Jen hit me up to do casting for this HBO show called "Euphoria." And we had a whole list of characters that we had to find. We were looking specifically for Fesco, we had Astray, Kat. There were scouts who went down to Florida, Northern Florida, and Michele went out to Ohio to scout. I guess I was based in the city specifically. So I was scouting in the city. I think it was like April of 2018.

But we were just doing a lot of street scouting, that was the task at hand was to scout these characters. Oh, we were looking for Rue also. And so there was a mixture between scouting actors and doing street scouting. And we basically branched out. So each scout went to a different region, and we all looked for all these different characters. I was taking an acting class at that time and it was like late at night, I was looking for Fesco. I met like a bunch of people that at one point I thought could be Fesco, but they weren't Fesco. But yeah, I was coming back from a class. It was 10 o'clock at night or 10:30 at night. I was walking back to the train and  I saw two guys walking down the street and one of them caught my eye. And you know, you just see somebody that you just know is — you know—these characters, we read the script for the first of the season and we knew who these characters were. We kind of like had this vision of who these characters were. We had different ideas for Rues we had different ideas for Jules. I mean, obviously the people that ended up being cast in the show, like defined who these characters are.

But you know, seeing this like guy walking down the street with all this swag and just this like fresh attitude and this fresh little energy, you just kind of hone in, you just zero in on something. And the character is like a drug dealer and a hustler — I think that there was something about Angus that was really —he caught my eye. And I stopped him and I talked with him and pitched him the idea of the project. And we didn't even know what this HBO show was gonna be, but it was HBO. I, um, which was exciting. But you know, the show is about a sensitive subject matter. And it's a whole thing to pitch that to somebody at 10 o'clock at night on the random block with a dead phone. But, I had business cards, I talked about the character, and I talked about the show. And then, you know, I write down the information about the project, and what the project is, how I could be reached, and how they can come into the office.

So I gave the information to Angus, and then that next day he texted me and he was like, "well, what do I have to do?" And so then he went into JV8, and he did an interview with our friend Geraldine, who works in the office. And she was able to put Angus on tape and do an interview. But typically, like from the interview, then they get some materials where they have to come in and do an audition or do an improvisation. But, there are a couple of different stages where he had to get pictures and do an interview. And then he was to come back and do an audition. But what happened is that he went back to Oakland and kind of like he disappeared for a week. He kind of went M.I.A. But then he finally came back into the mix and showed up again and JV8, we were able to get him the materials so that he could audition. And he came to audition with Jen in  New York, and it was during that audition that he like really kind of blew everybody away.

Abby Harri on casting We're All Going To The World's Fair.

A project that I worked on called, "We're All Going To The World's Fair," the trailer just came out a couple of weeks ago and it's coming out on HBO in April. It premiered at Sundance last year. And yeah, talk about a series of accidents, I met the director when I was in college. I was her intern at a non-profit for the arts and film. So she moved into directorial work now and we're like, dear friends, we've known each other for almost 10 years. And that film stars this incredible up-and-coming actress that we found for it named Anna Cobb. She's just like the most special, talented, loving, caring person, and hardworking.

She is one of those people where all of these things come together like that, where it's like they really wanna do it, they're really great at it, and they're perfect for the role. For the project, we found her through an open call that Jane, the director, put out. And did an interview with her to start and then they didn't audition that I couldn't be present for because I was working on another movie in pine Ridge. And I saw the tape and I was just like, "holy shit." Like, it felt like you were watching something from like an extras DVD from a movie where you're like, 'Oh, this is like the first movie of like this actor's career.' 

That was a film where it was super collaborative for me, which  I really value when I can be really collaborative with the director. And actually, I worked on the production of it too. And, Jane had asked me to be there to partially to be able to be giving any additional performance notes that I thought might be relevant. So it was like the first time that I really felt seen and heard with a director. And I was co-producing also, and, I did the wardrobe to save money. So like everyone was doing a bunch of different roles and it felt like one of those really magical projects where everyone was on the same page and doing it for the love of movies and the project.

We saw several people for it, but I think it was very clear from the beginning that she was quite special. And that was me working by myself because it was a very small budget project, so I didn't feel comfortable bringing a bunch of other people into work for free. I only had my own labor to rely on and Jane, the director, who did a lot of the work. So it was a limited team and it's good to like acknowledge the scope of something when you only have so many resources and make sure it feels really targeted and focused.

So the film is really rooted in the world of the internet. And so I took more time with it, so that I could research YouTubers and other people who were a part of the film. So I started the research process in the summer of 2018. And then, I think we ended up casting Anna, like officially in maybe December. And then we shot it in February of 2019. There's like a lot of real YouTubers and people who like are on YouTube. One YouTuber who made a fake YouTube video for the project, and made other stuff like licensed from YouTubers that was already existing so it was also digging into like internet world, which was dark but fun.