The Oscars are getting an award for best casting. About time, casting directors say
CBC
Beyond the usual glitz, glam and teary-eyed speeches of the Oscars, the 98th Academy Awards this Sunday will have something new: a prize for best casting.
It's the first new category to come to the award show in a quarter-century — the last one was best animated feature film in 2001.
The prize goes to a film's casting director, meant to recognize them for bringing together the people who make a story come to life.
The casting directors up for the award this year are behind some of the films that have had the most buzz all award season. Nina Gold is nominated for Hamnet, Jennifer Venditti for Marty Supreme, Cassandra Kulukundis for One Battle After Another, Gabriel Domingues for The Secret Agent and Francine Maisler for Sinners.
While movies have always needed the casting directors to fit real actors into a director's vision, they haven't always credited them for their work. And though it's still not clear what kind of casting choices the academy might honour, casting directors like Erica A. Hart say they're just glad the profession is finally getting its moment.
"It's huge," said Hart, a member of the Casting Society's board of directors. "It's long overdue. Ninety-eight years of Oscars, and here we are … but better late than never."
The first time a casting director got credit on a film was in 1968, when legendary casting director Lynn Stalmaster — who later got an honorary Academy Award for his casting work in 2016 — got his own film credit on The Thomas Crown Affair.
Despite that initial credit in 1968, Canadian Deirdre Bowen, who cast many well-known projects from A History of Violence to Kim's Convenience, said it remained the exception rather than the rule for many years.
"There was a time when the big fight that casting directors had was to get credit," Bowen said. "Now it's just a given."
She says the push for casting directors to regularly have their name on a film didn't coalesce until about the 90s. Since then, other award shows have added categories for casting — the Canadian Screen Awards have had it for film since 2021, and for TV since 2013 (carried over from the former Gemini Awards, which had the category even longer).
Hart says some in the industry have long seen the casting director as a clerical role — simply "pushing paper" — because the final decision rests with the director.
"Some of the people up above don't see us as a craft, let alone a craft that is [deserving] of the Oscar."
Bowen says it's much more than that. Her job is to present the director with actors who could play each character, and help them understand how the choice they make will "shape what the story becomes," Bowen said.
For Hart, she sees herself as a "detective" of the entertainment industry. She has to go to festivals and showcases and consume as much media as humanly possible to find new talent, or think outside the box and place people in roles that might not be obvious.
