How ‘Beef’ Casting Directors Claire Koonce and Charlene Lee Became a Team

It’s a cliché to describe partners as “finishing each other’s sentences,” but sometimes those clichés are actually true, and in the best, most charming way.

Take casting directors Claire Koonce and Charlene Lee, the team behind Netflix’s Beef, for which they just earned their first Emmy nomination.

In conversation, the two will let you know that they might, in fact, fall into the cliché, but when they inevitably do, it feels perfectly natural. They come off as a seamless unit that would give any director confidence that they know their stuff, and are having a blast while they’re doing it. The two spoke to us from Los Angeles.

Congratulations on the Emmy nomination. It must be pretty spectacular, but also, as casting directors, it must be especially rewarding when so many of your actors get nominated as well.

Claire Koonce: It really is. We are so grateful and thrilled that we were nominated, but yeah, it absolutely felt like a feather in our cap, the fact that we had actors in every single category, and even multiple actors in Supporting Actor.

Charlene Lee: Whenever you work on something, and you put everything into where you hope that people watch it, it’s been really great that it resonated with people.

How did you two get into casting in the first place?

CL: I knew I wanted to go into casting specifically for myself when I was in college, which is very early. I had been out here doing internships, crashing at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, doing these internships at different production companies, when I realized I was more interested in the talent side, but didn’t necessarily want to be an agent or manager.

I think I just fell in love with casting because I was so excited by the fact that casting one person could completely change the trajectory of a project. That was something that was really interesting to me.

CK: For me, I was a bit of a performer. I studied music since I was about three years old, and actually went to school for music. When I got my film degree, I wanted to be a director, but I very quickly realized that the only part about directing I liked was working with actors (laughs). So when I came out here, I very specifically wanted to be a manager, because I felt like that was the closest relationship that actors had in town and that was the most impact you could have on an actor’s career.

Then, [on] day two of my first job, I remember thinking, “I spent all this time trying to get this job, and I am in the wrong job,” because I knew that I wanted to be in the room, instead of getting people in the room. I think casting is on the side of the story. I really like being on the side of the story.

How did the two of you start working together?

CK: We’ve been working together unofficially for about six years, officially for about four and a half. That’s when we became CLCK and finally had a company logo.

That’s what makes it real. The logo.

CK: (Laughs) It took us like a year and a half to establish that we have really shared values about how to operate with people, how to operate a business, and how to operate creatively. We really, really enjoy the collaborative process of filmmaking and creativity. When we found that we had such mutual principles and foundations to the way that we approach this job …

CL: We found that that really helped us work well together.

CK: That’s what cemented our partnership.

CL: I was working in another casting office with a casting director named Rachel Tenner, for about seven and a half years. She’s wonderful. We were working on Fargo, when a pilot that I had cast came back pretty abruptly, and they needed close to 100 roles in five weeks. There was no way I was going to be able to do that while I was doing Fargo and the other commitments I had made. Claire had been recommended to me many times, and we were friendly at that point. We joined forces and to do that many roles so quickly, and for it to go so smoothly, we realized that we had complementary skill sets.

CK: We did a bunch of various projects and really got to know each other well until we decided to make it official.

Actors like Young [Mazino] and Joseph [Lee] weren’t exactly household names before this. When you find that kind of talent, and see someone unknown connect with a role like that, do you feel electricity? Do you look at each other and just know?

CL: Very much so. When I know something is right, and Claire and I talk about this a lot, is when something feels authentic and real. A lot of it is of course chemistry and scale, but so much of it is just, “Do I buy this? Do I believe this is real and authentic to me?”

CK: What we get, the feeling in the moment, is it feels like the top of your head lifted up and a world of possibilities just opened up. You’re like, “Oh my god, this is where this character could go. This is where the story could go.” It’s more like, “I want to watch this person. I want to watch this story. I want to watch this character.” That kind of electrifying feeling is really exciting to get.

A lot of actors will be reading this, so what piece of advice would you give to any actor who was coming into a room that you’re running?

CL: I think the thing that we would want them to know is that we’re rooting for them to succeed. An audition isn’t getting about getting something right. I think it’s just to not be afraid to bring yourself to the room and to every audition that you do because you’re uniquely you and you’re bringing something unique.

CK: Yeah, to jump on that, especially with a pre-read, that is the most freedom that you as an actor have. If you make a bunch of choices, and I believe you, we can work on making your choices line up more with what our team is going for. It’s not a test to see if you guessed the way this character goes. It’s more like an opportunity to show me how you see this. Like Char said, what’s uniquely your take on this character? I’m excited to see that.

CL: If we need to see something else, of course, we’ll let you know, but, yeah, I think the main thing would be to not be afraid to bring yourself to the room or to an audition …

CK: And to know that we’re on your side.

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