Filmmaker Sam Mendes on Casting ‘Empire of Light’
Must Love Actors.
That is the quality filmmaker Sam Mendes looks for in a casting director, he revealed to Casting Networks.
For him, that person in the U.S. is Debra Zane, while in the U.K., it’s Nina Gold. It was Zane who cast Mendes’ feature directorial debut American Beauty (for which he won a best directing Oscar) and went on to work with him on Jarhead, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road and Away We Go. Meanwhile, Gold cast Mendes’ war movie 1917 and his latest film, Empire of Light, now in the theaters.
“The casting directors I like working with – mainly, Nina and Debra – are people who, A, love actors – (which) is not always the case with casting directors, strangely, in my experience,” said Mendes. “And B are very opinionated and tell me when they think I’m wrong.”
When it came time to cast Empire, Mendes explained that certain actors were already on board for roles, including Olivia Coleman in the lead role of Hilary, a movie theater manager in an English coastal town during the 1980s. Toby Jones also agreed to join the project as the theater’s projectionist.
“I was very fortunate in that the person I wrote Hilary for, which was Olivia, wanted to do it, so that was very straightforward,” Mendes said of the casting. “And I had in my head Toby, and Toby did it, so those were the easy ones.”
What was not so easy was casting the role of Stephen, the young, black trainee hired at the theater and begins a May-December romance with Hilary.
“I needed to meet an entire generation of young, British, black talent for the role of Stephen,” Mendes explained. “I said to Nina: ‘Your goal is to show me everyone.’”
That meant meeting potential actors first informally before moving forward with readings.
“I get much more out of meeting them and talking with them than I often do when they read,” the filmmaker said. “I find reading generally a little fake; it’s so stressful for (the actor). They’re nervous, they’re in some weird room, they’ve got a script. Are they reading to me? Or to someone else? But sometimes in that process, you get a flicker, a moment, where you think, ‘Oh, there it is. There’s the person, the character I’m looking for.’”
That’s what happened when Jamaican-born, London-raised Michael Ward did his reading for Mendes. The former model, now 25, was already on the cusp of stardom thanks to his performance in Blue Story, a 2019 British musical crime drama that won him a BAFTA Rising Star award. Then the following year Ward earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting role for Steve McQueen’s Small Axe: Lover’s Rock.
“He read, maybe, two or three times,” said Mendes of Ward’s audition. “Every time he came in, I saw a bit more of Stephen until I thought, ‘Yeah, he’s there.’”
Gold’s knack for being on the pulse of a new generation of actors is something Mendes now relies on from his British casting director. Just a few years earlier, she did the same for him when casting the two young leads for Mendes’ war movie, 1917.
That film centered around a couple of British corporals on foot in the fog of war to deliver an urgent message. The roles eventually went to twentysomething actors George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, “neither of whom I knew that well,” said Mendes.
But just as she did on Empire of Light, “Nina gently steered me towards them until I saw the person, the character, emerge from underneath them.”
Concluded Mendes of his British casting director: “She’s wonderful.”
Looking to get your big break? Sign up or login to Casting Networks and land your next acting role today!
Related articles:
Casting ‘Causeway,’ Working with a Bunch of Wise Guys and Audition Pet Peeves: Ellen Chenoweth Spills the Tea
Cooper Raiff Reveals His First Time Working With a Casting Director
Alejandro G. Iñárritu: “Casting is a Very Serious Thing”
