On Her Own

Interview with Kari Kurto by Maria Pelczar

I spend plenty of time vegetating in front of the television after a long day. My favorite shows make me forget my troubles for a brief spell, but the best ones also make me forget about any and all other projects the actors have worked on before. The ability to inhabit a role and effectively become the character is the mark of a good actor, but how often do we give credit to the people who cast these shows?

How often do we consider what it takes to match the right actors with the right roles?

Back in college, while folks like me were determining alternative usages for PVC piping and creating schedules that had no classes before eleven a.m., Kari Kurto was busy developing her casting director chops at Emerson College. Her interest in not only acting, but in the art of finding the right actor for the right role inspired her to create an on-campus casting organization, which became her springboard to the world of casting directors in Los Angeles. Join Alors, et Toi writer Maria Pelczar as she chats with her friend Kari, discovering how a blend of passion, motivation and smarts can make dreams come true and make projects come alive.

AET: You attended . . . ?

KARI: Emerson College in Boston—it's a great film school filled with people who were a bit more on the 'different' or 'artistic' side in their formative years (read: the weirdos that you see sitting in the corners of your high school with purple hair) that find each other and connect through their various arts and interests at Emerson.

AET: Major?

KARI: I majored in Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations with a minor emphasis in film. I knew as soon as someone mentioned the word 'casting' to me my freshman year that that was what I wanted to do, and I thought I would approach it from a business standpoint and help actors truly market themselves to success. Plus it's what all of my friends were doing so I could hang out with them more, haha.

AET: I know you lived somewhere else......Tell me a story about your journey to Los Angeles. Did you have friends here? Contacts? A job?

KARI: Well since Emerson didn't offer any classes or programs that helped you learn how to be a Casting Director, I decided to help myself. I petitioned the board at Emerson to recognize a casting organization that I had drafted a constitution for, and I got it recognized and funded. I took that little group and turned it into a full fledged casting company. We ended up casting many many student films which led me to cast some independent films in Boston which eventually, through a friend, led the VP of Casting at Fox to catch wind of my project, and she actually asked me to put people on tape for an old Jason Alexander sitcom pilot called 'Bob Patterson' as they were having trouble finding the college aged son.

We did a good job with that and when it came time to come to LA for the semester long internship program I didn't love anything that they had to offer so I called up the VP of Casting and asked if they wanted an intern! I established that internship and maintained my contact with the assistant in that office throughout the semester after where I went back to college and graduated. A month after graduation she contacted me and said 'Kari, if you want a job in casting, you need to come out right now.' So on my best whim I packed up my entire life and headed out here with a giant duffel bag and a head full of confidence in myself. I went to two interviews in two days that the assistant in that office had scheduled for me and on the second interview I sat down and had coffee with a Casting Director named Dava Waite. We talked for three hours and she offered me the job on the spot.

AET: First Casting job/session? Show?

KARI: I started out as Dava's assistant and ended up becoming her associate after a couple of years and worked with her for six years (it goes: Casting Assistant, Casting Associate, Casting Director). When I started we were working on a show called "Yes, Dear" with Anthony Clark, Mike O'Malley, Liza Snyder and Jean Louisa Kelley. It was a perfect first job on a great small lot called CBS Radford which felt like home after working there for four years. It was the same lot as Will & Grace, Malcolm in the Middle, That 70 Show , The Bernie Mac Show, even the Big Brother house was there so it was always bustling! The writers offices were in little bungalow that looked like a suburban street (and the houses were also used as establishing shots for many shows to in fact, show a suburban street!) and we were in the middle of the production office so it gave me a real clear understanding of how a multiple camera comedy show comes to be. We also worked on a lot of TV pilots to shows that never got 'picked up' for the first couple of years I was there as well as some smaller series that were on for a handful of times.

AET: I know you worked on Weeds and My Name is Earl, are these the types of jobs you go after now, or are you looking at films? Which do you think is more challenging?

 

KARI: Yes! I was so lucky to be a part of such incredible shows! I remember the day Greg Garcia (Executive Producer of Yes, Dear and creator/EP of My Name is Earl) walked in with the script of Earl and said something like "So I have this new show I'm trying to pitch to the networks, do you think you guys could write up a wish list that I can bring with me to the meetings?" Dava handed it over to me and asked me to work on it as my first 'list' of actors for a pilot that I would make. I still have the hand written copy with Jason Lee's name at the top! And after that we got an amazing Showtime pilot called "Insatiable" and worked with Craig Zisk (he directed the pilot and is also the house director on "Weeds") who then called afterwards and said "Hey do you guys want to cast 'Weeds'?" We were like "Hell Yeah!!" and that's how those amazing opportunities came to be.

I got a great taste of what it was to be the Casting Director on these shows as I did a lot of the week-to-week casting of them and I would LOVE the opportunity to do it again soon. I just became independent a couple of months ago though so my plan is to get some great independent films so I can have them on my resume over the next year and then bring it to the networks and say "look what I can do!" and get some pilots and maybe even a series from those meetings. I've always liked to be over-prepared, haha. I'm well on my way with some great projects going on right now...independent shorts and films. Films are challenging but to be honest a bit more boring at times. You always want to get great, namey people in the lead roles so it's a lot of offering the roles and then you 'hurry up and wait' for the response to come back, and then you offer again! Eventually you then get into the nuts and bolts casting of the supporting and day player actors in the smaller roles which is fun, but I like the challenge of TV a bit more. Every week you get a new script with 10 or so characters you need to cast and have sessions for...you then reach a finish line at the end of the week and then start fresh with 10 more characters the week after. I also find myself doing some interesting projects like a mafia short, a potential vampire movie and an Indian romantic comedy, but my heart really belongs to comedic television. I love to laugh, what can I say!?

AET: Favorite show to work on?

KARI: It's tough because I've had a lot of favorites over the years. There was a pilot that we did with Rob Long and Dan Staley where we had Kirstie Alley and Ricki Lake as mother and daughter that was hilarious and I was heartbroken that it didn't get picked up, also a project called "Come to Papa" which was one of the funniest things that I've ever seen. It was very Seinfeld-esque and we put Steve Carrell in a role very similar to his one in "The Office" the year before that pilot was made. Also, "Weeds" was an amazing experience and every week that I got a new script and read it I couldn't believe I was part of a show that was written and produced so well. Plus I LOVE working with Showtime, they really trust your creative process and give you a lot of room to 'do your thing' which is why I think a lot of their shows work so well. When it comes down to it though I think my heart will always be with 'Earl' since I was part of the process from the beginning and I love the concept and all of the quirky characters I had to cast. Also, many of the people I worked with on that show were people that dated back to "Yes, Dear" so they really became a second family.

AET: Most difficult challenge when casting a part or a story about a role you had to cast that was particularly challenging?

KARI: Well most of my 'difficult' roles were on Earl when Greg would ask for all sorts of interesting people, especially for our 'Circus Freak' episode (which I made some rather interesting contacts if you can imagine!) or "Hey, I think I'm going to need some Aborigines next week" (which I ended up eventually finding some that were flying through LA through the Center of Australian tourism, but in the last minute we had to hire people that just looked like the real deal because we found out my guys apparently didn't have green cards), or the times where Greg would want me to check into the likes of Britney Spears during her...let's call it 'difficult to reach' stage, and to try to track down Bill Clinton to play a prison Warden (which I did and got a 'Thanks but no thanks and good luck on the show' letter back on official Presidential paper) but the most challenging one was probably when he asked us to find an actor with no legs that walked on titanium legs. I scoured the town and asked everybody...agents...SAG... friends with disabled neighbors...I even called the Paralympics to no avail! Finally after a week of searching I found a guy that was perfect...he was scruffy, perfect for Camden county, even had a couple of credits and was in SAG and had titanium legs and was soooo happy and SURE that I was going to get accolades for finding him.

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