Liz Lewis and Her Talent for Spotting Talent
The venerable New York casting agency expands to L.A. as it tracks changes in what clients look for in commercials.
Got a hankering for the performing arts? Love the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd? Imagine that you get to spend your day immersed in the quirks and idiosyncrasies of actors and directors, of scripts, parts and profiles. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
"It's nice to go to work every day and be entertained," says Liz Lewis, the New York casting doyenne and president of Liz Lewis Casting Partners. "And that's what's so great about what we do for a living. We love to see actors do what they do."
Not only does Lewis and her casting directors love to see actors 'do what they do,' they get just as big a kick out of the contribution they make to the final product – a TV spot, feature film, Broadway show, whatever – and to the lives and careers of the actors they work with. Liz Lewis Casting Partners has been a fixture of the talent scene since 1991, before things like the web reshuffled the ad industry, and they're not only still here, they're growing. The company has just opened an office in L.A. – it's first outside of New York – and is already using that base to build a new list of West Coast agency clients, as well as with producers and directors.
The company has all the necessary creds to be a force in L.A. Lewis herself is a member of the CSA (Casting Society of America) and BAFTA (the British Academy of Film and Television Arts), and her firm is certified as a woman-owned business by the WBENC.
They cast everything from TV spots and voiceovers to feature films, theatre, episodic TV and reality programming, and they're off to a hot start this year, working on spots for brands ranging from the Army to Walmart, and everything in between. The L.A. office, according to Lewis, was a big move for them, coming years after gentle prodding from a long list of clients, actors and friends.
"We've been working out there for a long time," says Lewis, who adds that she finally made the decision to open a full time office late last year. What made her decide to commit? Lots of things, she explains, some of which just seemed serendipitous. "We were out there last year, visiting production companies, and work just sort of happened," she says with a grin. "From there, things just started to pop."
Lewis says many of her clients, as well as the actors she works with, live and work on both coasts anyway, so it just makes sense for them to be there. "We're well acquainted with the talent base in both cities, and so we work seamlessly back and forth," she notes. "And clients are happy, because they can work with us and find the right talent regardless of where they're based. It's great for actors, too, since they like working with us."
About her new West Coast clients, she adds, "it's nice to have a new face in the casting world to work with, and that's what we are. And since in essence that's what we do – we specialize in finding new faces – we think it makes the casting process just as exciting for the clients as it is for us."
Lewis' team includes casting directors Angela Mickey (who's director of casting), Alison Franck, Rachel Reiss and Chrissy Fiorilli, along with Lewis' business manager, Lynn Taylor, and associates Lauren Braun and Madeleine Pasqualini. The group is tight knit, like-minded and highly collaborative, Lewis says.
The company's clients range from directors and production companies to agencies that do their own casting. "We have a wide network of clients on both sides of the industry, and that's part of what makes what we do so exciting for us, because our work is so diverse," Lewis says. "For us, every job is a puzzle, and it's fun putting it all together. Seeing the finished product is exciting, and seeing a new actor get a chance to work is always a great experience."
One thing that makes her people so good at what they do is their passion for it, she notes. "You need to be a great multitasker, for sure, but you also have to love actors, and we do," she says. "We're all doing this because we choose to, not because we couldn't make it in front of or behind the camera."
Lewis herself got into casting at the tender age of 22. That's when she began working with Claire Shull, a New York casting director whose husband, the infamously cantankerous Leo Shull, ran Show Business, the weekly newspaper that was the actor's bible (until it was eclipsed years later by Back Stage). Within a few years she started her own business and has never looked back.
These days, Lewis balances her company with the demands of being a full-time working mother. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and three kids, ages 4, 7 and 13 - a handful by any definition. But Lewis seems to have this inner drive that keeps her in perpetual motion. She's constantly bouncing between casting sessions and meetings with her staff on either coast.
The company's fans include agency producers and directors. Many cite the team's ability to find that largely unseen and mostly unforgettable face that helps make a spot memorable.
"Liz Lewis Casting doesn't just find talent, she finds the right talent," says BBDO Senior Producer Jenny Russo, who worked with Lewis to cast a voiceover role for an AT&T campaign. "Working with her and her staff is always a pleasure."
"Liz and Angela are so buttoned-up and on top of things, it's sick. I go in to a casting session confident that they'll show me the best people, and the process is always painless," says GARTNER comedy director Mike Bigelow. The director, who's based in L.A., works often with Lewis' team in New York, and says he gets great buzz when he tells people he casts with her when shooting there. "They always say, 'She's great,' and for me, that's a good sign."
Rabbit director Tim Abshire, with whom she recently worked on several Google spots, two of which won Clio Awards, likes the fact that Lewis delivers the unexpected. "It's talent you haven't seen before," he says. Asked just what he means, he runs off with a grocery list of types ranging from vegans to Virgos, sweethearts to stoners, street smart to nerdy - and sums up by simply saying, "Liz gets me."
Lewis's work for agencies has extended beyond casting for commercials and web videos to more progressive forms of brand communications. For Mother New York, for example, they helped cast the talent that appeared in two live events that were sponsored by clients; one for Microsoft's Xbox, which took place in Times Square, that called for literally a thousand (that's right, a cast of thousands, as they used to say) hip-hop dancers. (You can check it out here.) A similar project, also for Mother, was cast for Target. Called the "Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular," it was just honored at the AICP Next Awards.
"Liz and her team are an invaluable source for amazing talent, be it for commercial actors, high-end models, athletes, or dancers," says Sandra Goldblatt, the freelance producer who collaborated with Lewis on both the Target and Xbox events. "They run the gamut of media with equal finesse. No matter where I'm working, or what platform my work brings me to, Liz and her team are always my first call in the creative process. Each job we've done has been a creative knock-out, and on top of that, they've been filled with laughter and fun."
Director Christian Charles worked with Lewis and her team to cast a crew of Aussie actors who live in the US for a campaign running Down Under for the Greater Building Society. Why in the US? Because it was easier to shoot the campaign in the States with Aussie talent to accommodate the schedule of its in-demand star, Jerry Seinfeld.
The spots are a riot - in the most recent campaign, Seinfeld gets annoyed when he learns that only 95 percent of Aussie consumers approve of a promotion he did for the bank, so he flies down to Oz and sets out to win over the five percent who weren't swayed. (See "Video Conference," "Window Washer" and "Surfer" here.)
"Liz and her casting directors have a unique, thorough and dimensional approach to finding great actors who not only embody the roles they're cast in, but deliver impeccable performances," says Charles. The director, who shot the spots via Mouseroar, is finishing a feature cast by none other than Liz and her team.
While Lewis and her crew have years of experience, they've seen the kinds of assignments they're working on change as advertising styles have shifted. Have they felt the pull of "Jersey Shore" on their work? "Obviously, the trend towards reality programming has tipped the advertising scale towards more reality-casting for commercials," she notes. "Trends in entertainment always impact advertising. But we've been casting reality for over 10 years, well before the trend started, so we're well prepared for it."
Lewis says the diversity of her casting directors helps in this regard. "We come from so many different backgrounds and areas ourselves, it's been helpful in tackling these projects," she says. "One of the keys to working in this genre is being able to discover new avenues to connect with the non-actor and the non-professional community.
"You also have to be able to weigh in with the clients on what their goals are from a demographic perspective," she adds. "The kinds of faces they'd like to see in their spots have to be weighed against the realities of the pool of people who are not only willing but also able to meet the demands of the project."
Similarly, the increased numbers of documentary and feature film directors working in the commercial market has shifted the requirements for the type Lewis and her team search for, "in terms of their abilities and past credits. The Internet has also changed things; the immediacy of delivering casting to clients and receiving feedback has been a great boon, but it's also served to compress production calendars, so we've become more efficient."
Technology has played an obvious role in this. Everything from Skype to iChat can help further the casting process. "This kind of technology helps us when casting in multiple cities, and lets our clients view casting choices wherever they may be," Lewis notes. "But we still feel that this is a person-to-person business. No matter what technology we use, we're still talking to agents, managers and talent all the time.
"That said, I feel that people want to feel like the business is personal again, and it always will be personal for us," she says. "Technology has made it possible to find new clients and talent, but we still make the phone call, we still go out to find new talent and visit with our clients. It's so important, and that's how it's always going to be for us. At its heart, good casting is always about making a connection with people."
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