Kahleen Crawford has a type of sensible, soothing Scottish accents that make you calm down as quickly as you hear it. That is useful if you’re coping with nervous actors, who typically have to be disarmed once they come into her audition room. It additionally works on journalists interviewing her.
Over time, a childhood curiosity in observing individuals and their habits has grown right into a thriving profession as a casting director, one which has led her to forged such Oscar-nominated movies as Dwelling and The Misplaced Daughter. Most just lately, she labored on the Apple TV adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Buccaneers, all episodes of which at the moment are streaming, and the acclaimed movie All of Us Strangers, starring Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott. She spoke with us from her workplace in London.
How did you get into casting?
I graduated from Glasgow College, I did movie and tv and theater research collectively and I used to be a runner for some time in London. I completely hated it [and was] handled horribly. I got here house in a match of pique and, since I knew that I appreciated watching individuals, I thought of how I may apply that to my profession. I utilized for a job as an agent and had an extended dialog with the agent who mentioned, “I don’t assume you wish to be an agent, I feel you wish to be a casting director.” She gave me a telephone quantity.
Gillian Berrie is a producer. She has an organization referred to as Sigma Movies, however she had arrange this casting firm in Glasgow referred to as Massive Fish. Once I went in to fulfill her, she mentioned to me, “I let you know what, you may both work within the casting firm, or you may study to be a producer and be my assistant.” She was searching for two individuals. I didn’t have any clue, however I very a lot was dedicated to the casting thought, although I didn’t know what it was. I simply form of felt, there’s one thing about this people-watching factor that works right here.
It’s attention-grabbing that you simply selected a profession based mostly on that curiosity.
I spend a lot time watching individuals and doing a model of studying power or watching mannerisms or listening to their voice and making an attempt to know why they communicate the way in which they communicate, by way of the place they’re from, possibly influences of locations they’ve lived. I research physique language a lot. I’ll look throughout the room at a celebration as a substitute of getting a dialog with somebody instantly subsequent to me. I’m simply nosy.
I believed, “How can I work with individuals and performers?” That’s the rationale that I utilized for that job. I don’t assume I had any clue what I used to be doing. In any respect. I simply didn’t have any clue what the choices had been. I didn’t perceive what casting was. My movie research had been all about, you understand, psychoanalysis and feminist concept, white steadiness on a digital camera, and what an editor’s job appears to be like like.
I’ve all the time discovered it fascinating that movie colleges don’t handle casting in any respect, ever.
I went to an previous college. The Nationwide may be very educational, and no, actually no person taught us about casting. Curiously, I went to the Harry Potter studios on Sunday, they usually additionally don’t speak about casting. There’s all these indicators up for manufacturing design, and also you hear from the plasters and also you hear from all of that, and there isn’t a little bit part for casting.
Do you assume your fascination with watching individuals has helped you in your profession?
I feel the curiosity might be extra within the nonverbal stuff. When it comes to the way you apply that to casting, what story do I feel persons are telling me with the issues that they’re saying and the issues that they aren’t saying? And the way do you match these issues up?
I suppose generally these issues are conflicting, and that’s when you understand, persons are both hiding issues or mendacity. You get to a stage the place that may be helpful, most likely, as a result of it additionally then tells you whether or not you consider the efficiency. As a result of it isn’t simply in regards to the issues that the individual is saying. It’s about all of the issues they aren’t saying, which might be why loads of administrators minimize to individuals once they’re listening, not once they’re talking.
Would you say that your innate sense of learning individuals, and the ability you’ve honed through the years, has modified the way in which that you simply run a room?
Once you’re making an attempt to do this, you don’t all the time get it proper, however the purpose is to permit somebody to have their finest 15 or 20 minutes, and the way can I do my finest to let this individual get the job? I feel a number of the casting administrators that you simply communicate to say this. We would like you to get the job. I feel it additionally implies that it’s important to be simply as attentive to the one that you don’t assume is as doubtless they’re gonna get this half as a result of they’ll utterly subvert your expectations for the higher and in addition generally for the more serious.
That segues proper into my final query, which is what recommendation or piece of knowledge would you give to any person coming in to audition for you?
An thought to think about is that that is the beginning of a relationship. There are actors of their mid to late 20s coming in, and I’ve recognized a few of them since they had been solely eight years previous.
Additionally, even if you assume you’re not proper for the half. When you’re an orange, and even when you assume that we’d like a banana, are available and be one of the best orange. As a result of one, we could select to alter it, and two, possibly some place else that’s what we’d like. So are available and do the easiest model of what it’s important to supply. Oh, and one different factor. When you’re an overthinker or you will have a adverse voice in your head, you wrestle to manage your ideas if you’re underneath stress, you solely should survive a ten to 30-minute audition. Flip it off. Do all of the shit speak to your self after, if that’s the way in which that you simply function in life, or you may’t cease your self. However only for that audition, flip it off.
This text initially appeared on Casting Networks.
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Written by Neil Turitz
