Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Marcia Shulman - Interviewed in Los Angeles, 2003

Marcia Shulman is the casting director responsible for the original Buffy cast - and for bringing David Boreanaz into the limelight. She chats about the show, the actors and yes, David Boreanaz.

How did you get into casting?

I think I’ve always looked at the world as a casting director, since I was a small child. I had to know every single actor, in everything I saw, but for no apparent reason. And luckily a reason became apparent.

I started out my career out of college working at Sesame Street. A freelance producer who had an office next door to me [noted] the way I would talk about talent and movies [and] said to me, "You know, you’re a casting director."

Largely due to my own naivety I said, "You know what? I am. I will go and be a casting director." I quit my job at Sesame Street and sold myself as a casting director.

I don’t know that this could happen now, although, maybe if you had a desire and a will and a lot of naivety you could. But at the time there was this whole group of little TV movies called after-school specials in the mid 80s, moralistic tales about like drunk driving and date rape and things like that. Because people assumed that I had worked a lot with kids and these were geared towards kids, they gave me a chance [on these].

The first movie I ever cast was A Christmas Story, the Jean Shepherd/Bob Clark movie, which is a classic here. Then in the late 80s I was very involved in the New York independent film scene as a producer and a casting director.

How did you come to cast Buffy?

Gail Berman - now president of the Fox Network, still my boss, and the executive producer of Buffy - sent me the script of Buffy and asked me if I’d be interested in casting television, which I’d never done before, and casting this particular project.

I actually wasn’t interested, because I didn’t want to come to LA. I’m a New Yorker and that’s where I wanted to stay. But I read the script, and I was so excited by it - I thought it was brilliant. The funny thing is, when she conceptually pitched it to me, it was not something I felt would be interesting to me.

This sounds very funny, but I’ve always been very intrigued by vampires, and I was the associate producer on a movie called Vampire’s Kiss, starring Nicolas Cage? I always felt vampires were part of my life, [so] I read it, and was inspired by it.

I came to LA, sat in a room with Joss - and we really clicked. We both had a very historical sense of who these [characters were]. I talked to him about casting ideas but all the people were dead, because they were such classic characters in a sense. Even though I knew he wanted to make it all very hip and modern, the prototypes were very classic for us, and we had the same prototypes. Considering these were dead actors, that was pretty extraordinary.

So he hired me right then and there and we went to work. Buffy really completely changed my life because I went from casting and producing films to casting for television, becoming the Head of Casting at Twentieth Century Fox studios, and then becoming the Head of Casting for the Fox Network - and it’s all because of Buffy.

A meteoric rise.

Well, you get to work with good material and a great creator and it’s a little bit easy. I loved the material. It was fresh and fun, and it was also the beginning of the WB network, so we had nothing to lose, except do the best we could do, and I think we more or less pulled that one off.

Who are you most proud of bringing into the limelight?

That’s a hard question because obviously everybody did amazing work, but the most fun story for me and the most Hollywood story is the discovery of David Boreanaz, which at this point might be somewhat legendary.

I was casting for the role of Angel, which was a one-shot deal, and I was very obsessed with this character. Most of the time if somebody’s just going to be on a show once, you don’t get completely obsessed with the character, but I loved the mystery of [him].

He was supposed to be the most handsome, charming, mysterious, every superlative you can possibly have, [guy], and I met a million people. I would say I auditioned three hundred guys, for one scene basically. We actually found a couple of people that [we thought], "We’re shooting tomorrow, this will be fine."

I kept saying to Joss, let me have a few more hours, and he was like, "Fine, but we have people, don’t drive yourself crazy." Out of the blue, a friend of mine called, who I knew as a producer in the independent film world, and he said, "I know what you’re looking for, and there’s this guy I see walking his dog outside my window. I don’t know what his story is, but I think you should meet him." I said "Yeah, send him in."

He walked in the room, and I looked up and wrote next to his name, "This is the guy." He never even opened his mouth. We just chatted for a while. He told me where he was from, we talked about italian food.

I said, "Wait here," I ran down the hall and I said to Joss, "I’ve found the guy." He did that one episode, and the rest is history.

Why was Willow was recast between the pilot and the show?

I think that the way we originally cast Willow, was kind of as a gauche version of Pippa Goldway. And, as I said earlier, we wanted a hip show; we just felt it was worth exploring if we could find someone that put another kind of spin on it.

Alyson walked in the door, just to read to me, and I brought her over to Joss and the other producers. She brought this vulnerabilty, but I would say more than anything, this kind of hopefullness to the character. You really rooted for her, and you saw the intelligence.

To me that was the quality that really made me bring her to the next step of meeting the producers. I just thought she was not so much the outcast girl in the ways that we [normally] think of that kind of girl.

Was there any thought of casting Kristie Swanson as Buffy again?

Not Kristie Swanson per se, because it was set in high school, and she couldn’t play a high school girl any more.

I think we all, to a certain extent, had those characters [from the film] in our heads, in the sense that Buffy was a Valley girl. And you know, people aren’t Valley girls any more. It wasn’t that plastic, spineless character, and I think we sensed that.

Sarah, who I’ve known since she was about eight years old, was originally brought in for the role of Cordelia, because we knew based upon her soap work that she could play that part very well. But Sarah was a very perky young girl. When she first came in she was wearing big floppy hats and granny dresses, she was not the fashionista that she became. She was such a good actress and she had such star quality.

We were having problems finding Buffy, so we said, "Let’s try Sarah as Buffy, she’s so charismatic and maybe she could do her version of Buffy". It was actually the best thing that could have happened, because it opened all of us up. We could do our own Buffy, and these characters didn’t have to be like the characters in the movie.

I think that’s a great part of its success. I think if we had cast it the way it was in the movie, it never would have had the legs that it had. I mean, who here is that Valley girl any more?

You cast a lot of Buffy auditionees in other roles - is that common?

Especially when you’re casting an all-young show, you’re casting from a pool of people. You get a good actor and think, "Well, they’re not this, but I’ll remember them for when this comes up." So yes, that happens a lot.

The only person for me who was a contender for Buffy who I had to eliminate immediately was Katie Holmes, because of the night-shoots and the length of hours. Katie was not yet eighteen and worked the regular workday, so I couldn’t put her up for the part. But the next job I got was to cast for Dawson’s Creek, and Katie was the first person and we all signed off on her. So casting out of a pool of people really served my next job very well.

Is casting a learnt skill, or an instinctive thing?

For me it’s a gut [thing]. Whenever I do a job, I really psychoanalyse every single character, and isolate the qualities I’m looking for.

I have discussions with my producers, and they tell me the qualities they’re looking for. Then I have my own things, because for the most part I’m sitting in a room alone reading people, and out of that I bring a group to my producers.

It’s something I feel very confident about. I think it is a talent, but in a way it’s not a talent, it’s really about intuition. I’ve always approached casting as kind of a designer. I can visualise, and then the acting ability has to correspond to that visualisation.

Then there’s the X Factor that makes somebody a star or not. That, I think for whatever reason, I have the ability to recognise.

Who would you cast as Buffy if you were casting now?

That’s a really hard question. For me, the joy of casting is discovery. The least favourite part of the job is making a list of people who are already known.

Even when I’m working on a thing now, if somebody comes to me and says, "Can you do a list," I so enjoy the process that I almost have a negative knee-jerk reaction to doing it that way. Yes, those people might be on the list, but let’s find someone new.

Fortunately, working at Fox Network - as opposed to doing movies, or even some other networks - [is that] they really invest in the discovery of talent and making stars, so I have so much fun there. That sounds easy to do, but boy...

What Sarah, what all those people brought to those roles, it’s remarkable. It’s a tribute to their talent and Joss’s creative skills. It’s hard to imagine slotting anyone that I know of now into those roles, they have so made them their own.

What’s the best way to get work on a show?

We have casting directors assigned to each show individually, so the thing not to do (probably) is go directly to the Fox Network.

The best would be to have an agent submit you to a show, to go and audition. That’s the standard way and that’s the best way. But it’s always worth taking a shot and sending your picture and resumé in.

I don’t think in all honesty that people would pay that much attention to somebody sending in a snapshot that said, "I want to be an actor." I think that there’s respect for the work and the training and we look at it like that.

What are you working on right now, and would you work with Joss again?

I would love to work with Joss again on anything that he does. I think he’s, as somebody said, there are a lot of basketball players, but there’s only one Michael Jordan. I think Joss is in a league of his own.

We’re constantly doing things for the network now. I’m involved in the day to day casting of each show, I give suggestions. I approve casting, I send our individual casting directors talent that I’ve met along the way, either through agents or theatre or saw somebody in a movie, or saw somebody in a magazine article, whatever.

I’m very involved in identifying talent for show development. Finding somebody who could really fit what the Fox brand is, and taking them to either comedy or drama development, to have them either create a show for them or a part for them in a show.