The perfect hero is someone who genuinely like doesn't really see it coming.
You want somebody who is open to change. Maybe a little uncomfortable with it.
That is a key is finding someone who is at that point in their life where they're ready.
You're kind of like The Wizard of Oz behind the curtains, you're making everything happen.
My name is Danielle Gervais and I'm the EVP of casting and talent at ITV America.
I've come up in unscripted television and moved over into, um, into casting, through
a series on ABC called Wife Swap. “Real wives, real drama”
“On this season of Fix My Family.” “An all new Forged in Fire.”
Was Pawn Stars one? I saw that on your IMDB. We're casting the items. And then certainly
doubling back and make sure we've got good sellers
Good luck too with the Emmy's coming up as well.
How does it start from the second that you find out that there's going to be a new season?
What is the first step that happens? The first thing we need to do is determine,
you know, where are we going? Once we identify the city, we have, obviously,
this is a team of people. So we'll sit down. It's the initial war room
and we'll say, what stories have we already told on the show?
What stories do we want to tell on this show? We were trying to tell that story of Reverend
Noah, two seasons prior, we just never found the Reverend Noah. We never found it.
So that just happened. “Our mission this week is to help noah take
the past out of pastor and find faith in himself!” Are we looking at like a day where you're
like having lunch brought in and you're just hashing out, literally every emotion and story
that you could access? I don't know if we brought lunch in, but we
had candy and snacks. I know, I remember that. Um, there's always snacks.
We will also in that initial meeting, pull in our partners at Scout who are the creators
of the show And that's where we really hash it out. And
we talk about like, things like how political do we want to get, because you also don't
want to hammer people. We never want to forget what was special about
that initial iteration, like, a slob who's ready for a make better, right?
So you've had your big war room meeting, um, you've decided on your location and some of
the key themes that you're going to be exploring in that season, what happens next?
The next thing is I have to figure out, you know, who's going to go to the city. What
are we going to do when we get there? Because we're not out there for very long, we have
budgets.
We will, you know, immediately contact, um, the, the film commission in that city.
They'll help us sort of steer to some degree, You'll have two people hit the ground in the
city with a plan of attack. And you'll have usually a two people team
back in the office with me doing the, um, doing all of the outreach remotely, which
is also huge. So they'll meet people, love them and go,
you got to interview this guy. So then the team back in the office will typically take
that interview on so that the team on the ground can continue with their work.
We make little cute flyers and we walk around, you gotta be pretty friendly to be in casting.
You really are going to be able to talk to anybody. Um, and certainly there's people
that are completely weirded out by it. We'll see businesses that we want to hit a
dog groomer. And lo and behold, Rahana comes out and she's six foot three with this incredible
story. I was asking one of my producers, what’s
your favorite story of finding someone? We had a gentleman Marcos, um, owned a fish
shop. They went to that fish market every single day. They just felt like there was
such a, such a vibrant, like life to that place that it just was prime.
So they went every single day for two weeks and suddenly they peeked back at behind like
a stand and they saw this fedora. “What’s the obsession with hats? Where
did it come from Marcos?” “In Mexico, all the time it’s ‘hey,
compadre.” “Aw that’s cute, it’s your thing.”
We're a little stalker-ish at, I'm not gonna lie.
I'd be remiss. If I didn't ask if you were like secretly looking for people who clearly
have incredible hidden bone structure. It is always fun to see, like, especially
if you've got like this big bearded guy who hasn’t cut his hair and it's like, what
will he look like at the end of all of this? From what you're saying, it sounds like the
casting will really flow from the story themes you want to emphasize, rather than you find
some person who just pops for some reason. It is absolutely both. It's rare that you're
like, here's the exact story want to tell, and it’s perfect and comes together.
Kenny in Kansas City, you know, one of my favorite, I love all of the episodes of course,
but he's one of my favorite heroes and it a producer was in a bar watching a Croatian
soccer game and there he was. His dog had passed away and he was in, you know, an older
gentleman living alone. On paper. Meh? You know...there.
And then once it came to life, he himself was such a lovable, um, rootable hero. He’s
one of my favorites. And so you've developed this list of good
candidates with a combination of remote interviews and on the ground — reporting is really
what you have to call it. What happens next in the process?
We pitch quite a few Netflix. They have such vision and they support us. And, you know,
these interviews aren't always pretty. Right. We're doing them via Skype.
These aren't professional professional people in terms of being interviewed and they're
nervous. Netflix is able to see through a lot, um, in that regard.
To land on, let's say eight heroes, we'll probably pitch. I mean, internally we will
look at it. frankly like hundreds. But in terms of the network, you know, we'll
usually triple that number to show to Netflix. There are some where it's just like, we all
just go, “Oh my God. Yes.” And then there are others where we can be split because it's
all very subjective, right? What sort of diligence do you have to do when
you're casting these people to make sure that they don't blow up in your face in a few months
when the show comes out and somebody killed somebody or has done something terrible?
We won't even pitch anyone to Netflix until we at least have done as much preliminary
diligence as possible. So we'll search Lexis Nexis and those types
of things. We'll do a pretty deep sweep on social media, back about 10 years with some
people. You know, that can be a deal breaker. They are the secret sauce, they are incredible.
I can't say enough about how special bringing the five of them together has been, it's been
incredible, but the heroes...each one of those heroes serves as the foil to that episode.
Right. So they help Antoni shine.
They help Karamo shine. We have a list where when we, when we look
at somebody as a potential hero, we always want to keep those guys in mind, you know,
what will they help bring out in our fab five and vice versa?
And so it sounds like when you're casting for this show in particular, it's really about
how well that these people will amplify the story themes that you're looking to drive
home rather than: are they good at sound bites? My team is incredible, they have a gift for
really identifying like who who's going to take the journey in a really authentic way.
And who's in it for the free couch, right. Because that’s a thing.
Are they authentic? I mean, at the end of the day, we can teach
people how to put the question back into the answer but you can't fake emotion and you
can't fake somebody's journey.