I was going to be playing Emerson. It was something that I hoped to do, but didn't insist upon. I'm a good actor but don't kid myself that I'm the best there is in the area, so I was open to holding auditions for it and trying out myself, but in the end Glenn made an executive decision: I'm a known quantity and he's happy with the quality of my work so far.
When we hold casting calls we tend to open it up to the entire general public. Yes, if you go through actors access or agencies you'll get some very groomed performers with great headshots, but we would have missed out on some real jewels in the past if those were the only avenues we took. You get all manner of submissions from people of all levels of experience and to be honest, we were pretty bowled over.
Here's why I hate thinking like a producer: in a perfect world, the best person to read would get the role. Full stop. The reality is that that isn't always the case. The good news is that we were beholden to no higher ups, so nobody could nix our choices for not being "marketable" or some noise, but there are other factors. If you have one really good actor who works for half of a couple, their age might determine the casting of the significant other. If you know that a role is very physical you need someone who can handle that aspect of it. If a character is supposed to be physically intimidating and a wee tiny gal has a good audition she may be edged out by someone equally good who is over 5'2". Thankfully we didn't have to do very much of that in this particular project and I truly believe that the best actors for the roles ended up in the right spot.
There was still the rushed aspect of it. Ideally we'd have had a little more time. Maybe there was someone who was good in the audition that didn't fully get the tone of the scene who with a little coaching could have given us a perfect interpretation? Unfortunately we didn't have time for that.
The role of the First Entity was also a puzzler. Though she doesn't talk much in the film we really needed a strong performer and weren't sure how to put what we needed into audition format. We did our best and fortunately we ended up with someone exceptional.
Here is another thing that I want to address: For those who have only been following through the process of Driven, feel free to skip ahead, but I occasionally hear people say that Glenn and I only cast our friends in our projects. Well... I can honestly say that anybody that I've worked with I would consider myself to be on friendly terms with AFTER THE FACT. In any of our big casting call projects there has been a mix of people that we've worked with previously and people that we never saw prior to their audition. That being said, if I'm looking at two equally good performers, but I've worked with one before and know that they are really agreeable with long hours, unpleasant conditions, strangers and a lot of waiting, there is a likelihood that I will go with the person that I know is awesome and positive ("But Casey, if people went with the person that is positive how would you ever get work again?" Shut up, I'm awesome in a different way. Golden retrievers are amazing, but sometimes you need a doberman.). Praises be, all the UNKNOWN quantities turned out to be great and real team players, too. Including Rich, but more on that later.
We only had callbacks for one character and with all the gamepieces in place we were ready to move forward.
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