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Thandie Newton has opened up about how, in one of her callback auditions, a director, while having a camera shooting up her skirt, asked her to touch her breasts as she thinks about the guy making love to her in the scene. She thought it was a little weird but didn’t say anything at the time.Later, she found out an unpleasant truth about the scene: “It turns out that the director was showing that audition tape to his friends after poker games at his house. And they would all get off on it.”
During one of the first auditions of her career, Judi Dench was told that she had “every single thing wrong with her face.” It was also added that, due to this, she probably wouldn’t be in any movies.
Both casting directors revealed that they never observed actresses being mistreated during the auditions. They said that they would never tolerate anything like that in their audition rooms.
When Rose McGowan was invited to audition for one of Adam Sandler’s movies, she got a script to read over and a note as to what she should wear to the audition - a dark form-fitting tank top that shows off cleavage. Also, producers told the actress that “push-up bras are encouraged” as well. Rose declined the audition and went to Twitter (now X) to expose the sexist requirements.
When Lisa Rinna was 24 years old, she had a terrible casting couch experience. The producer told her: “Just pull your panties down and bend over, and the role is yours.” The actress refused to do so, which resulted in her losing a role.
Katie Griffin also mentioned that she doesn’t even know any casting directors who would be bold enough to mistreat any actors: “We’re not in the business of harming or tearing down talent. We do quite the opposite. We empower and elevate talent with the sole intention of getting them booked. We create safe audition spaces, give redirects during the audition, and provide feedback after the audition so talent can deliver their best work.”
Back in 1976, Meryl Streep was just a struggling actress on Broadway. At the same time, the son of the Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis Sr. was preparing to make King Kong, and Meryl caught his attention.When she walked into the audition, Dino De Laurentiis Sr. said to his son that she was ugly in Italian, thinking she wouldn’t understand it. But Meryl knew Italian, and she understood. Getting called ugly at such a young age can be quite harmful. So, she let him know that she understood what he said and added: “I’m sorry I’m not beautiful enough to be in King Kong.”
At one of her auditions, Lana Condor, an American actress born in Vietnam, was told to “be more like Hello Kitty.” That left the actress in shock at how ignorant and racist the casting director was.She straightforwardly called out the request. For example, she noted that “Hello Kitty” doesn’t have a mouth. So, in a way, the casting director was trying to take away her voice, which was very insulting to the actress.
Once, Tracee Ellis Ross was auditioning for a role of a Harvard-educated lawyer on a network show. For the audition, she wore a skirt suit and heels. But it didn’t fit according to the casting people, so they made her try out plenty of other kinds of clothes. In the end, they picked the shortest skirt she brought and one of the T-shirts from a person in the office.And that wasn’t the end. They also made her put on someone else’s bra, which was too small. What the actress couldn’t stop wondering was, “What did I just allow myself to do?”The actress, who ended up getting the role, was dressed like she was going to a nightclub. This made Tracee Ellis Ross feel confused and humiliated.
In the topic of fighting the mistreatment of talents, the casting director Rose Rosen mentioned that she has heard of intimacy coordinators being hired for auditions, which she thinks is a brilliant idea: “They will advocate for the talent and clarify any issues.”Another benefit of the auditioning Rose mentioned was the rise of virtual auditions. According to her, these types of auditions “give the actor full control over their environment, and they can only do what they are comfortable with.”
In the topic of fighting the mistreatment of talents, the casting director Rose Rosen mentioned that she has heard of intimacy coordinators being hired for auditions, which she thinks is a brilliant idea: “They will advocate for the talent and clarify any issues.”
Another benefit of the auditioning Rose mentioned was the rise of virtual auditions. According to her, these types of auditions “give the actor full control over their environment, and they can only do what they are comfortable with.”
Gina Rodriguez said that in one of her auditions, she was told that the casting directors liked her, but they weren’t sure if she was sexy enough. So, they told her to come back in a tight black dress. The actresses added that this didn’t even make any sense for the character. They explained that they needed to make sure she was pretty enough to be on the cover of a magazine.This made Gina feel marginalized and belittled, even though, at that time, she was already a professional in the industry who had played many diverse roles.
Sandra Oh says that the worst advice she has ever got was: “Go back home and get famous, and then come back to LA and see how it goes.”
Once, Emmy Rossum was planning to audition for a role of a character that wasn’t seen naked or in a bikini during the movie. But for the audition, the actress was asked to show up in a bikini, and that was the whole audition - they didn’t need her to act anything. Apparently, the director wanted to know if she was fat, as she was told: “We really love your work, but we just want to see how tight your [butt] is.”
Lena Headley once said that when she was in her twenties doing a lot of audition tapes, one casting director told her, “The men take these tapes home and watch them and say, ‘Who would you f***?’”The actress expressed that she refuses to play the game of “going to auditions and flirting,” and she’s happy she has lost some roles because of it.
Gwyneth Paltrow has opened up about an indecent proposition she got during an audition in her early career. She was offered to meet up in the bedroom after said audition. She was shocked and left thinking that someone, who didn’t know better, might think that their career would be ruined if they didn’t get intimate with a man from the casting crew.
Tiffany Haddish has a habit of leaving her purse with a recording phone in it in the audition room. Later, she would come back for it, apologizing for leaving the purse in there.She does this to find out what people in the audition room actually think about her and say behind her back. She would hear things such as “She is not as urban as I thought she would be,” or “Her boobs aren’t big enough,” and even “I really think we should just go with a white girl. This role should be changed to white.”
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When Ashley Benson was told she needed to lose weight for a role, something that she was being told nearly constantly, she asked: “Wait, what? Do you want a skeleton?” She was a size 2.
When Goldie Hawn was 19, she went to what she thought was an audition, but it turned out to be something else. Cartoonist Al Capp took off his business clothes and came into the room in a dressing gown. When she sat down, he wanted to kiss her, but the actress refused. When she was leaving, she didn’t have enough money to go back to the 1964 New York World’s Fair, where she was dancing, so he gave her $20 for a taxi. When the actress recalled this situation, she said: “It wasn’t a good day.”
Kerry Washington once wore overalls to an audition. This resulted in the casting people saying she looked like a child and not sexy, so they couldn’t see her.
Elizabeth Banks auditioned for the role of Mary-Jane Watson in the first Spider-Man movie opposite Tobey Maguire. But she was told she was too old to play the role of Spider-Man’s girlfriend. She is only a year older than Tobey Maguire, and at the time of the audition, she was only 28.The role of Mary-Jane Watson went to Kirsten Dunst, who was only 20 at the time. Elizabeth got a smaller role of Betty Brant, secretary at the Daily Bugle.
Maggie Gyllenhaal once opened up about when, back in the day, she was auditioning for a part she really wanted in a movie. She was wearing a black linen dress. During the audition, she was told the dress wasn’t hot enough.She also was asked to come back later and “sex it up a bit.” So, for this, she put on leather pants and a pink leopard skinny camisole. Still, she didn’t get the part.
Zoe Kazan shared that she felt pressured to be flirty during an audition.She also said she had been asked to “wear something body-conscious” during the auditions, which made her aware that the casting crew was checking out her body. “You leave the situation feeling not good about what just happened, but you don’t really have the language for why. You feel like, if you said something, it would reflect badly on you.”
For her role in “One Tree Hill,” Sophia Bush auditioned three times because of the absurd requests from casting directors. During her first audition, she was told she wasn’t sexy enough, and during the second one, she was too sexy. So, only the third time was the charm.
The author of “Mary Poppins,” Pamela Lyndon Travers, told Julie Andrews, who was auditioning to play Mary Poppins: “You’re far too pretty, of course, but you’ve got the nose for it.”
January Jones revealed the incident that happened during her second-ever audition, that was for “Coyote Ugly,” which left her mortified. After she did a reading for the part, Jerry Bruckheimer wanted her to dance a pole dance without a pole on top of the table to Prince’s “Kiss.”Later, he said to her that she did great at reading, but she had no rhythm, which prompted the actress to call her agent and say that she didn’t want to do this anymore.
When Camila Mendes was auditioning for “Riverdale,” she was told that she wasn’t “glossy” enough for the network, as her hair was frizzy from the rain. She was asked to come back in a few days.And she did. For that, she asked her friend to do her makeup to look glowy.
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