Bernie Telsey, a veteran casting director whose credits include the most recent film versions of Kiss of the Spider Woman and Wicked, says social media has only enhanced the role he and his peers play.
“Are casting directors needed even more so immediately? Yes,” he told Deadline in an interview. Given the rise of digital platforms and their ability to consistently mint truly global stars, Telsey said the art of matching talent to roles is “like having to be a detective. Where should we look? In Spain? In California?”
A recent example of the epic quest to make an ideal match was the search that yielded Tonatiuh, who plays the part of Luis Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman. “Even though he had been through the doors of the Telsey office in the past, we didn’t really know him,” Telsey said. Sometimes a sense can be gained by auditions or video reels, and “sometimes it’s by looking on TikTok.”
Before deciding on the U.S.-born Tonatiuh, “we were looking at all the Latin American countries,” Telsey said. With Wicked, he continued, “we were looking at every young woman who said they sang,” whether they were from Julliard or America’s Got Talent.
Telsey, whose influence is felt across theater, film and television, was honored last weekend at the Hamptons Film Festival with its inaugural Achievement in Casting Award. Along with Kiss of the Spider Woman (which is screening in the Hamptons) Telsey has cast the two Wicked movies (on leading of the Broadway show) and Rachel Getting Married, as well as television’s Ugly Betty and The Gilded Age. Telsey also remains very active on Broadway and in the theater world. His company, which launched in 1988, has cast shows like Rent, Hairspray and Hamilton, along with numerous national tours, Off-Broadway productions, and regional theatre productions across the U.S.
Asked whether Broadway has rebounded from the doldrums of the Covid shutdown, he replied, “It does feel like it’s back. Most important, the audience is back. … People are excited and want to work in the theater again, even if it’s not as financially rewarding for actors as film and television are.”
While Broadway was devastated by the pandemic, film and TV faced an even bigger trial in 2023 with the dual strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, Telsey said.
“immediately, in order to survive, you just have to work in all the mediums,” he said. Since the strikes, he went on, “There’s less work. There are fewer television projects being made since the strike, obviously with all the corporations owning television networks and whatnot.”
Telsey’s company is sometimes hired with the express assignment of finding the right star to lead a major on Broadway, which has increasingly relied on A-list names to drive ticket sales. In other cases, the remit is to uncover an unknown, or identify a bit player ready to step up to the lead spot. Several high-profile titles of late, from the next James Bond film to the upcoming Harry Potter series on HBO Max, have deliberately gone after fresh faces.
“People are open to the brand new person,” Telsey said of contemporary audiences. “As many projects I’m working on where they want a name, at the same time it’s like, ‘Who have we never seen? Who hasn’t worked in 10 years? Who hasn’t had their own show but has only been a supporting player?
Social media and TikTok can play a significant part in the process, Telsey said.
“We find people on Instagram all the time and that doesn’t mean they were living in Ohio and untrained,” he said. “They were just someone who was unfamiliar to us. And here they are, dancing on Instagram and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, they should be seen for this dance project we’re doing.’”
There’s nothing wrong with tapping social media as a primary source, Telsey added, “not when you see that the person was trained but just never got an agent. … It’s just another layer. That doesn’t mean that when I’m doing Romeo and Juliet for a major regional theater company I’m going to look at TikTok. It’s still a craft.”
Speaking of craft, the casting profession got a boost recently when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said it would add a casting award at the Oscars starting next year.
“The Emmys have been doing it for more than a decade,” Telsey said. “Any recognition is exciting.”
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