Watch ‘Only Murders,’ ‘Abbott Elementary,’ ‘Genius: MLK/X,’ and ‘Echo’ Casting Directors Talk Challenges and Triumphs

“The work that we do is so incredibly important to the success of the shows that you watch,” said casting director Kim Williams.

Discussing the unique art of being a casting director served as the kickoff panel to IndieWire’s “Pass the Remote” FYC series, produced in partnership with Disney. The panel included casting directors Tiffany Little Canfield (“Only Murders in the Building”), Wendy O’Brien (“Abbott Elementary”), Williams (“Genius: MLK/X”), and Sarah Halley Finn (“Echo,” “Loki,” and “Ahsoka”). Watch the video above. (And register for future panels in our series here!)

Held at Vidiots in Los Angeles on April 25, the discussion moderated by IndieWire awards editor Marcus Jones provided a chance for casting directors to share highlights of the current TV season and do a bit of demystifying of their profession. “If it weren’t for us, those shows wouldn’t really exist because if you don’t have actors really inhabiting these roles in these amazing ways and bringing all of their talent to the role, you’ve got nothing,” Williams said. “And that wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for us doing all the work that we do.”

For Canfield, part of the delight in working on the third season of “Only Murders in the Building” was casting for a host of characters associated with the Broadway show — the musical murder mystery “Death Rattle” — helmed by Martin Short’s character. The newcomers include movie stars like Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd, TV fan favorites like Jesse Williams and Ashley Park, and theater talent like Wesley Taylor and Gerald Caesar. However, there was one actor particularly delighted the casting director: Jeremy Shamos.

“I feel like this guy flies under the radar and is an absolute genius,” Canfield said of the Tony-winning actor who has appeared in projects such as “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Better Call Saul,” and “Birdman.” During his audition to play Dickie Glenroy, the brother and manager of Rudd’s character on the Hulu series, Canfield revealed that co-creator John Hoffman determined the short scenes they were using (so as to keep secrets about the season-long murder mystery) would not suffice. He returned with a whole eight pages for Shamos to read, cold.

“It was unbelievable what [Jeremy] was able to prepare, and it just showed you how brilliant actors are and what a huge part of the process they are, their work, their talent, their craft,” said the casting director. “That is something a stage actor would be incredibly good at, is knowing how to figure out that scene in moments and come in and deliver a full performance. It was really special.”

For O’Brien, part of the challenge of casting “Abbott Elementary” is filling the classroom with students, many of whom end up becoming scene stealers on the ABC comedy. “They treat it almost like a classroom. So they go in and they’re really doing work and the kids start forgetting that they’re on a set. They start thinking that they’re really actually almost in a classroom, and they get confused that the actors are actually their teacher. And so it becomes that environment, which is really cool,” said the casting director.

“Part of the challenge is if some of the kids that are extras, they’ve been doing it for so many episodes that you really want to reward them and upgrade them with a line or two lines. But in our business, once you do that, you can’t go back. So now you become paid as a principal actor. Financially we can’t have 30 kids being paid as day players, so that’s where it’s like we slowly try and reward, but we can only budgetarily have so many kids [upgraded].”

Plus, as the “students” of “Abbott Elementary” move up a year, “then we have a new kindergarten, five-year-old kids, which generally have no experience. So it is a bit of a gamble too,” said O’Brien. “Thank gosh they do such a great job on set because you never know on that day what’s going to happen really.” 

Youth also played a factor in the challenge of casting “Genius: MLK/X” on National Geographic. “The thing I found really fascinating, and I’ve spent my entire life sort of immersed in the iconic nature of both of these men, but I never realized that they both sort of stepped into their power at 26 and they both died at 39,” said Williams. The casting director had overseen the previous three seasons of the anthology series, but was more hands-on with this iteration spotlighting both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. When Williams and the show’s team approached Kelvin Harrison Jr. to play the former Civil Rights Movement leader, he passed on the basis of not feeling ready to play King yet — but that was before there was a script to share.

“When that first draft of the script came in, and I was like, ‘This is so, so good.’ I called his manager and was like, ‘Look, I need him to read this. Really, just read it, and if it’s a no, I get it, but just read it.’ And the manager was like, ‘Ok, I’ll send it to him,’” she said.

“And that’s when I said, ‘Because let him know when King was stepping in, he wasn’t ready, he didn’t know what was coming, but he stepped in and we see what happened as a result of that,’” said the casting director, highlighting how the 29-year-old actor was already around the same age as when MLK came into prominence. “And it was great because the very next day I got a call from the manager who said ‘He’s in.” I was like, ‘Yes.’”

For “Echo,” Finn did not have anyone on her radar to play the deaf, Native American superhero that first appeared in the “Hawkeye” limited series on Disney+. She and her team did not get any submissions in fact, when they had released the breakdown, and eventually found star Alaqua Cox through a self-taped audition from a wide open search. But the real beauty of working on the project came from everyone’s natural inclination to make the process more inclusive of Cox. “We all in my office wanted to learn ASL so that we could communicate somewhat with the actresses we were reading. We wanted to be as authentic as we possibly could for Native American culture and have accurate representation,” said Finn. “But as we got into it … I was so impressed with the actors who came in to audition after Alaqua was cast. Devery Jacobs for her callback, learned the entire thing in ASL. She never knew ASL before she came in and did her entire callback with Alaqua in ASL. And then all the actors on set learned. They all learned ASL before they started shooting. Graham Greene, Tantoo Cardinal, Chaske Spencer, everyone.”

Those kinds of inclinations to do work that is not on the page factor into the advice that Canfield gives to any of the actors that may have been present in the “Pass the Remote” audience. “Make choices,” she said. “I love a strong wrong, more than boring.”

For plenty more from the casting panel that helped commence IndieWire’s “Pass the Remote” FYC series, watch the full video above. And request an invite for more panels in the series here.