Casting Directors Lament State Of Production In Los Angeles: “I Haven’t Worked Since Last June”

The mood at Wednesday’s 40th anniversary Artios Awards may have been celebratory, but several casting directors acknowledged that Hollywood’s ongoing contraction is continuing to have a negative impact on their profession.

Before the awards show at the Beverly Hilton that paid tribute to the casting work on Wicked, A Complete Unknown, Emilia Pérez and Conclave, CDs privately lamented about the state of production in Los Angeles and how opportunities remain scarce.

“It’s been a hard time for a lot of folks in our industry,” Casting Society President Destiny Lilly (The Color Purple, Only Murders in the Building) tells Deadline. “There was the strikes and the recent fires which have been really devastating for people in this community. And there are still ripples from the pandemic. I think across the industry we’ve heard that there are fewer jobs and that affects casting professionals as well.”

Other members of the board of the Casting Society, which is responsible for the Artios Awards, have not been immune from the recent decrease in production.

“I haven’t worked since last June,” admits the Emmy-winning Steven Tylor O’Connor (13 Reasons Why, The Healing Powers of Dude). “All I heard last year was ‘stay alive until 2025.’ In a former life I used to be a manager at a bank, so I heard that and was like, ‘great, I’m not going to spend any money and I’m just going to save, save, save.’ But not everybody’s in a position to do that, and I’m now starting to stress about needing to work again. January was a nightmare month for all of us.”

“It’s been horrible,” adds board member/veteran CD Felicia Fasano (Better Things, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend). “Survival of the Thickest was the last full show I did which ended in December of 2022. And then there were the strikes. I got a couple of little bandaid, fun jobs this past last year, but it was not at what I was doing before. Everyone’s like, ‘what are you doing?’ And I’m like, nothing. None of my producers have anything going. I mean, look at the [international shows that are] on Netflix. Where’s the stuff that we would cast? If that is what everyone is watching, they’re going to buy more of them.”

Even the casting pros in the unscripted world are feeling the pinch.

“I’m definitely seeing it,” says board member/Emmy winner Jazzy Collins (The Traitors). “I went from working consistently, going from one show to the next. And then it trickled down. I’m seeing a lot of things that are not getting green lit that normally would get greenlit.”

Collins went on to joke “what did I do” after acknowledging that many of the new unscripted shows feature repeat, popular contestants like what you see on The Traitors, which she worked on in the first season. “I’m seeing a lot of casting now going toward celebrity casting rather than having a brand new unscripted community come out,” she admits. “We’re not seeing any of those new casts anymore. We’re still getting a lot of celebrity driven shows. It’s not feeling good.”

Given the recent Stay in L.A. campaign, CS president Lilly is hoping that positive change could result in more local production and the opportunity to get actors back in the room to audition.

“Casting professionals are currently doing the best they can with the resources that they have,” she says. “My hope is that our partners at all of the studios as well as the producers will make it possible for us to continue to have the highest level of productions here in Los Angeles. I think it’s really important for us to remember that casting professionals are affected in the same ways that actors are. People have moved out of the city, people have had to move to smaller homes. And so when you’re working from home, that often is harder to be able to have people come in and self-tape in person. We used to do so much. I know that we have been doing more of that and we have been getting some more spaces slowly, but it’s been a slow process and our goal is to really help to make it so everybody has the best casting process possible. For some actors that will mean taping because they actually prefer it. And for some actors, hopefully that means them being able to get in the room more and to get feedback from the team. But I think it’s really a process. It’s not just up to casting directors alone. It’s really up to the studios, the producers we work with to help us actually be able to have space.”