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In the Room With
Ellen Chenoweth
The longtime casting director on finding a “Coen face” and her audition room advice By Jack Smart
enough. So I realized that was another layer that we had to find: the Coen face. What is the “Coen face”? Do you just know it when you see it? I think it just comes from working with [the Coen brothers] over the years and seeing what they respond to. And also, it’s not that Macbeth has a lot of laughs in it, but when it would be something maybe a little more humorous, you would hear [their] chuckles in the back of the room, and you would know that you had gotten it right. It’s the same thing with Shakespeare: You wanted to hear it a certain way. You were just looking to hit that sweet spot.
RAQUEL APARICIO
ILLUSTRATION: SPENCER ALEXANDER; BENTLEY: MARIANA MORALES PHOTOGRAPHY
LEGENDARY CASTING DIRECTOR ELLEN CHENOWETH’S PROfessional credits span decades, from “Terms of Endearment” all the way to this season’s “The Woman in the Window,” “The Humans,” and “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” The latter is her latest collaboration with Oscar winner Joel Coen, who, alongside his brother Ethan, hired Chenoweth for titles including “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” “No Country for Old Men,” and “True Grit.” Next up for the CD is Barry Levinson’s “The Survivor,” the real-life story of Auschwitz concentration camp survivor and boxer Harry Haft. What qualities or qualifications did you look for when you were casting “The Tragedy of Macbeth”? We were really looking for people who could handle the language; that was
backstage.com
an important thing. I mean, I would scour everyone’s résumé; I miss the days of pictures and résumés where you turn it over and look at where they went to drama school and who their
peers were. But I definitely relied on people who had done Shakespeare, or at least who’d been classically trained. We just needed people who could handle that sort of material, and not everyone can. And there’s still that thing that Joel and Ethan—in this case, just Joel—want, which is an interesting face. They’ve always gravitated toward that as a big part of their movies. I think somebody could be very good and maybe, to them, seem a little not unusual
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Any words of wisdom for actors? What do you wish more of them knew? I know people are nervous when they come in for casting directors, and I’m just hoping that they’ll be good. I want to cast the part. So I think just prepare as much as you can. Show up on time. Try not to be nervous. I’m looking for them as much as they’re looking for me. There’s this misconception that we’re trying to keep people out, or we’re the gatekeeper or something; and actually, we’re just searching.
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Read the full interview at backstage.com/magazine
01.20.22 BACKSTAGE
