Renowned Casting Director, Bernie Telsey

Published Jan 8, 2024, 8:01 AM

Isaac Mizrahi chats with casting director, Bernie Telsey (“The Color Purple”, “Only Murders in the Building”) about why he can’t believe movie stars email him sometimes, how a teacher changed his life, the sacrifices he made for his career and more. Plus, he shares invaluable tips for actors and performers about auditions.

Follow Hello Isaac on @helloisaacpodcast on Instagram and TikTok, Isaac @imisaacmizrahi on Instagram and TikTok and Bernie Telsey @bernardtelsey and @thetelseyoffice.

(Recorded on November 1, 2023)

I always think every audition is like a blind date. When you go to a blind date, you're looking in the mirror, you're thinking about what you're wearing, you're thinking about what you're going to talk about. Like all of that thought process goes into that date, so to speak. So every audition you have to think of as the same thing that everybody wants it to be good.

So just be able to breathe and be who you are.

This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about the idea of success and how failure affects it. I'm Isaac Msrahi, and in this episode, I talk to award winning casting director and co founder of the MCC Theater Bernie Telsey.

Hello, Isaac, it's Bernie Telsey. Could you give me a call. I want to talk to you about this design idea I.

Have on this podcast. I think it's important not just to talk to like gigantic movie stars and writers and TV stars, but also to people who are just really good at what they do. It's one of the things we talk about all the time, especially in the performing arts, and today I'm going to talk to Bernie Telsey, whom I've known for thirty five years or something. For a really, really long time. Bernie is definitely one of the most important casting directors alive. He's cast Broadway shows like Rent and Wicked and In the Heights and TV shows like This Is Us and Only Murders in the Building and the Gilded Age, plus jillions and jillions of other things. Anyway, I think this is a great episode. If you're an actor or a performer, or if you know an actor and a performer, you should tell them to tune in and listen to this because Bernie gives a lot of great advice.

So let's waste no time. Let's get right into this.

Bernie Telsey Darling, Hi, Isaac, you look good. Your hair looks good. Did you just get a haircut or something.

No, it's just it's actually growing, and it's you know, messy.

Mess me too, Darling. Where do you work out these days? Do you still go to Manhattan Plaza?

Yes, in the early early morning, do you? Because I don't go anymore. I can't go anymore, you know, Oh my god, you always went well.

I went swimming. I liked the pool right here. But remember the crazy old Queen c A who sort of ran the pool. No, I never lived died well, he died over COVID.

So I don't go.

I just had to stop going. Bernie and I go to the same gym, or used to go to the same gym. But that's not how I know you. I know you for about one hundred years. Yeah, it's amazing, And yet, Darling, I know so little about your history. Like where are you from? Are you from New York City proper?

Yeah, I'm from Elmont, New York, which is like the first town of Nassau County, So I grew up there the whole time until I moved to the city.

And what brought you to the city.

Oh, I could not wait to get away from Long Island and get to Manhattan.

Where I went. Were you a theater major?

Yeah? I was an acting major in a theater management major, because I always wanted to start a theater, which thankfully i'm doing.

Where do you think that gene comes from? Because parents don't exactly encourage their kids to do this, and they didn't.

Mine certainly did it. My mother encouraged me to take accounting. But oh godd bless her.

But because Bernie Telsey, that's a perfect thing for the county. I'll just say, but it did get me my first job, so credit to her.

But it started by going to the day camp, you know, in doing sound of Music and Fiddler on the roof, playing Teva at twelve years old.

You can tell me everything, Keep going, keep going.

I went to a day camp, you know, where I played the von Trapp's son, and then the next year I played Tevier.

Wow, so you went from playing Nazis to playing Yeah, go on, it's.

A whole thing.

But really, then I got into high school and we didn't have a big drama department, but we had a little drama club, and I got really friendly with one of my teachers, Ronnie Russo, who was a music teacher, and he just happened to also live like close by where I lived, and he ran a theater company all the way out of Long Island, and I just started going with him after school. You know, my dad worked at night, my mom didn't drive, and I would go with him after school. And then I was in the chorus of this community theater that rehearsed, you know, seven to ten. The only way to get there was to drive with him and drive back home with him. And I started working in the office as a ninth grader and a tenth grader seeing how this theater company was sort of running and learning about admin and I was hanging out with all these thirty year olds as a teenager, and I got the taste of it.

Bernie, I'm going to ask you this question about your relationship with your parents, because I know that you have a really, really, really close relationship with your kids, you know, but it was a different time. Were they aware that you were doing all this? No?

I mean they were aware because they came to the weekend performance, you know, of Mana Lamacha and I was a horse or I was a jet in the West Side story, But they didn't know where I was after school, that I was actually helping in the office and getting home at one am. I mean, they didn't, right, you know. God bless my dad. He just worked all the time at nights and on the weekend, you know, he was in retail. So they knew I was doing the theater, but they had no sense that that's what I was going to do for my life.

I often think the adversity that I experienced as a kid prepared me for the world and made me go out there and do something.

You know.

I think that do you feel that way about your own? Yeah?

Really, and again I love my folks, but it made me like hungry because nothing was being sort of given to me or directed me that I had to sort of find it by the peers that I met who were ten years older, fifteen years older. Like even college was like, oh, go to the community college down the block, and it was like, there's got to be something else. And sought out NYU and figured it out and borrowed money and you know the whole thing.

And listen, you are known in the world as a great casting director, the greatest casting director director, and so how did that occur to you?

Like how did you make the leap.

From community theater to NYU to musical production or something like that and then into casting.

I knew what a casting director was. I knew who like JULIETT.

Taylor doing all the Woody Allen movies, right, you know, as a young actor, but I didn't really know what they actually do as a job. And I went to NYU and I was in the theater management program, who at that time was taught by all these working professionals in New York, Like the way if I was teaching or you were teaching now, and they wanted to set you up for all these producing jobs, you know, go work for Annie Eisenberger, go work for the Schuberts. And I had already met Bob Lapone, and I was like, no, we're starting a theater company the day after I graduate, so really, I don't want to go work for somebody else. And then it was my admin teacher said, I know these two casting directors who are looking for somebody to work part time. And I thought, oh, I could do part time because that won't interfere with my dreams.

Wow.

And I worked for them part time, Meg Simon and Frank Cuman, and I just stayed there for six years. I mean I loved every minute of that. And they started taking me to the theater every night, and you know, having a place to talk about your taste and what you like and what you're seeing around town.

And you know, I was acting for a little bit.

I understudied Matthew Broderick on Brighton Beach Memoirs, but really I started seeing actors and I was like, oh, I can't do that. I'm not that good, Like that's really good. How can I help that really good?

You know? And I just stayed in casting.

I mean, I loved Meghan fran They taught me so much. And then I went on to go freelance with Resa Billy and Billy Hopkins, helping them on their movies that they were doing, Desperately Taking Susan and Fatal Attraction, and then Richard Avedon asked them to do a commercial and we did this like IBM commercial, and of course I only knew off Broadway actors. I knew theater actors, and we put you know, Ron Vadder from the Performance Garage and Bob Joy and Larry Brigman, all these great theater actors in their first commercials. And the commercial took off in the ad agency world, in the advertising world, and then Recent and Billy started getting all these calls for commercials, and they were like, we're not doing commercials.

We have too many movies. You go do them. Gop, go open up your own shed and do commercials.

And it became the sort of perfect thing for me to do while I was starting this theater company, because I was like doing commercials every day, bringing in theater people, and you know, we did any Liebowitz's commercial. You know, all these cool people that were doing commercials at the time. We were casting them and it was great. And then that led to like regional theater. A young director who I knew said come do this play, and then it all sort of fell into doing Rent off Broadway. That was when Jim Nicola at the workshop said we're doing this little musical and I tried to turn it down.

I mean, I was like, I don't know, and he was like, no, please do this musical. We saw that you did this one for Peter Seller's. Peter Seller's the director, the director, the opera director.

I had directed a rock opera for him that Jim's that director mean, you can't sorry cast for Peter, and Jim saw that and thought, well, that's what we need in our new rock opera called Rent.

What I love about this story is how he approached you and you were kind of reluctant to do it, and then it became the thing that puts you on the map.

And the best experience I've ever had in my life, because.

You've ever had in your life, You've ever had in the theater for sure, right.

Yeah, and not because you know, we didn't know what it was.

But it was so hard because it was at a time when they weren't off Boardbay musicals like there are now every other week, and there wasn't rock pop musicals. It was Le Miz and Saigon. And as I say to agents all the time, nobody wanted their client to do a two hundred dollars a job off Broadway when they could be on the road and do the spear Carrier in Ley Miz. You know, nobody hundred and fifty dollars, you know, and nobody wanted to do it. And I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, I knew what I was doing, but it wasn't like I had a list of twenty.

Ideas, right.

So like, for instance, I'm trying to think of the cast, Daphne Rubin, Veige, Adam pest Write, Adam Pescal, jessel Mark, you really, Jesse L Martin, a.

Few names he exactly. So these are people that owe their careers because of it.

But wait a minute, but you were there casting commercials and you had all of these actors that you knew and commercial performers. This is a very specific kind of vocal range that you were casting and somehow.

What did you do? Did you hold?

I was like, yeah, we were holding auditions. We were looking under every rock possible. Wow, because how was I going to know a list of twenty year olds who could sing like the way Jonathan Larson wanted them to sing.

So we just kept digging and seeing everyone.

And it made you realize that is so part of the job with casting, depending on the project, is really searching and looking.

You know.

We would try to do an open call, no one's coming. It wasn't like when it went to Broadway, four thousand.

People showed up for that call. Right.

We would put like an ad in the back of the Village Voice, you know, like thinking like you want to be a rock star, you know, didn't even say it was theater and I had a little office at the time, and in the back room was like thirty men who looked like Alice Cooper and Adam Pascal and it was like please God sing please, you know what I mean.

And Adam someone be able to say yeah, wow.

You know, Adam was so handsome and sang like a you know, amazing wow. He got cast. But it was great.

I believe this story is so inspiring to me how sort of came from kind of nothing. What I do remember about Rent was that it was a long journey. Yes, it started as this workshop, and then there was another workshop and another worship, and there was this kind of core bunch of people that kept showing up for the different workshop residences for instance. And then finally it was a success at at the workshop at the workshop, and there was a big buzz about it. People, my god, from the first reading. But did casting that change your life?

I did?

All of a sudden people start showing up for audition.

Because then all of a sudden producers were calling and saying, oh, come do this. You know, I'm producing Prison Laughter on Broadway or Paul Simon, I'm producing The kpe Man.

You know. Then all of a sudden, it was like, oh my god.

And thankfully my wife was like, you need to get an office and stop using the mcc phone and you have a real business now. And I got space and because I was a staff for two at the time, you know, and all of a sudden, Rent was having five national tours, right.

And you know, casting your damn head off.

Yeah, but it was fun. It was so much fun, and it still is so much fun. It's a great, great job.

I love it. I love it.

Well, listen, there was this sharp like ascent for you after that, like you sort of started taking off, not just with fabulous projects and new projects, but also, like you said, with regional companies of rent and different things and all of a sudden jobs on a coming away. Was there a moment where you failed or had like a big setback that you learned a great deal from It wasn't like a.

Career setback, I don't think.

I mean, I think part of my goal was also when I saw that casting really can be a profession, and how do we sort of wake up the world to know that we are part of a creative team and it is a creative job and no different like a costume designer or a set designer, you know, and still it's not a profession that people know about or a job that people know about.

It. All right, so let's talk about it, because first of all, what do you do someone calls you or do you call them? Like, for instance, let's talk about the most recent production that I saw, which was Sweeney Todd, Right that Josh Grobin, that idea that is such a great idea. I don't know who thought of that. Annalie Ashford, Like, the casting of that is so genius.

I can't take any credit for that because when Tommy Cale, the director called, they already knew. He and Josh had already discussed I doing this production with Steven Seinheim, and then they came to me and said, let's put a reading together. We want to hear it with Josh with the intention of doing a Broadway revival.

I see, so I was about Anne. Yeah, we will bring in that amazing child from Stranger Things.

Great. Oh my god, he was so.

He was so perfectly perfectly cast to that. It was a lot of inspiring casting in that thing.

Yes, thank you.

And then to have a lot of new people to get their Broadway debuts and stuff like that.

But yeah, Darling, is there no Tony Award that goes to a casting director as yet? No, there is no Tony Award, no Tony Award.

There is no Oscar as I can think, but there is an Emmy, right, but there's no Oscar either. And it's something we really all as an industry.

It should be.

It's, you know, like it needs to be because it is mostly what makes the show happen.

Right, It's how you see the show, it's how you win, it's has show you experience the show. I mean that Emmys, thank god, Yes, there are there are five categories for casting.

Well who do we speak to? What petition do we sign? Seriously, Darling, it's the Broadway League. Go fund page? Do we start for this?

But it's the Broadway League for the Tonys and the Oscar. But you know they are talking about it. I don't know, at least in the Oscar world. You know it's it's coming. We as casting gregers have brought it up.

So oh nos.

But well I'm glad to hear that because it doesn't compute to me, and I would be interested.

Well, I think audiences would be interested because everyone at home is always casting it, you know, you know what I mean. I mean, especially with the years of American Idol and the Voice and all of that kind of stuff. Yes, we've all learned to have an opinion, So why not so.

When you're casting something, describe your life a little bit. I mean, I can imagine there was a point in your life where you were just holding a lot of auditions and seeing a lot of people, and then it kind of spread and you right, Oh is that true?

Oh yes?

Still, now I have a staff and there's thirty people here who are every day doing auditions for something. But how it starts is we get the call, like from Tommy Kale or from a producer Jeffrey Seller or and say, we have this project. We want to do a revival of Sweeney Todd, or we want to do this brand new musical some like it Hot or whatever it is. And then we asked to see if there's any material we can read, if it's something brand new or score that we can listen to. And then I try to spend as much time with the director, a producer and the writers so we could get inside them to understand what is it that they're writing and what is it that they're visioning that we can then supply the options to them, and then we go away and think of our ideas.

Sometimes we do.

Lists if we're talking about a star vehicle for Broadway play revival, and sometimes we're like, Okay, let us show you these twenty ideas for this one role and twenty ideas for this other role. Sometimes we do live auditions in the room. Sometimes we're doing tapes with people, or we're doing zooms like this right, and we're constantly trying to put a collage of a company together.

And does it ever not work? Do you ever not cast someone? What's that?

My god?

Yes? And then you keep going.

I mean you're constantly collaborating with the director and they're like, that's not it.

Okay.

Did you ever get fired because it was like, I can't with Bernie, he's we brought in five five days of being cast.

Not not in the middle of a project like that.

But sometimes a lot of these shows go through stages and you cast the first reading and then the second reading is nineteen months later, and then you get the call that, oh, they decided to go with someone else.

Right, it happened. Wow, you know, who wha wha, wha, whoa whoa wah, Wow, that happens.

But like you know, I'm we're all very tight in the theater world as casting directors, so we don't mind.

So you understand, you get it. But how much of your job is about negotiations?

Oh, good question. In the theater world, we actually don't do that. There's a general manager who actually makes the deals for all the actors. We're there to help when things are like not moving forward, and we try to get involved when the GM asks us.

But in film and TV. We do all the negotiations. I mean it's a different.

Mean let's say Josh Grubin wasn't attached just me. He taught, and they said, we really want Josh Grobin get them for us, you know, and then you have to make the contact or something, and then you have to say, okay, yeah.

Then we go after that agent and try to sell the project and try to entice that actor. Oh, come meet the director. Can you come meet this. How about we do a reading out loud so you could see if you like it. I mean we have to try to, you know, entice them to get involved. And then every day it's a negotiation of something some you know, I mean like selling somebody the idea of something right, you know, Like Jesse el Martin will always tell me if you look at all of our original rent auditions, there's like seven days of auditions and everyone has Jesse L Martin, no show didn't show up.

Wow, you know, because it was like, I don't want to do a musical. I'm not a singer.

And I drove up to Connecticut and I was like, Jesse, you have to come in to rent, you know. So you know, it's not always like that, but you're always either negotiating with the agent to try to get people in to coax people. Yeah, because you know, many actors have too many choices.

I had this incredible talk with this director yesterday. It was so inspiring, and he was talking about a person that he wanted to cast in a role in a movie and how he kept like sort of seeing him at dinner and go over at the.

Table and go hey blah blah blah blah blah blah.

And then finally this actor was like, no, no, no, And then the casting person put him in front and said, or they just set up a meeting through a casting director, And all of a sudden, this actor was like, oh, is this what you were talking? It's sometime it's unbelievable. How like sometimes you can only get things done through the right channels, right, How much of that is true?

How much of your job is about.

Kind of networking and knowing people and making no deals And you know what I mean?

And I love agents and managers and whatnot because I talked to him every day, do you but it is about well.

I know I have to, but I'm getting I like some of them too.

You don't always know what's getting to the actor, you know what I mean. And it's a people business. And luckily because of the NCC theater, I have other relationships with actors because sometimes they're in my theater and I'm in their dressing room with them.

It's not you know, the scary casting director behind the desk. Now they're already here.

So as I know actors, I mean, I don't go around the agent, but I'll go to the agent and then also.

Go to the actor, right.

You know, if I can to say, like, do you know about this? I'm sure your agent gave you this, hope you can do it, wow, Because it's a people business. It's not like it's anything shady. It's just the more ways you can contact people the better. Always, as you must know in your field, I do.

What I'm scared of these days, speaking of my field and other fields, in all fields, is that social media plays a big part in it, you know, and terrifying a little.

I mean, do you run up against that.

I'm sure in TV you have to run up against where someone where you have an idea for someone great to cast in something, and they go, oh, they only have fifteen followers on social media so we can't, I mean, tell me about that.

Yeah, it's not as black and white as that.

But everyone is always bringing up, now, how many followers they have. It's always being discussed. Is it ever really getting in the way.

Sometimes? Well, you know what I mean. First, now, what I have to tell you.

I was pitching a show to a TV executive and I finally got in front of them. I won't mentioned who it wasn't this person runs the studio, you know, and they were going to make a decision, and they changed the subject that we were about to pitch the show, and all they wanted to talk about was like social media following and we should probably think about our social media following. And it was like, well okay, like it was dead in the water at this meeting. You know, that was so difficult to get you know, yeah, it's really hard.

That's because the main conversation in all circles, even in the theater.

You know.

Again, it's not getting in the way of necessarily someone getting hired or not, but it's just talked about too much, or then it's talked about that actor's presence on social media.

You know, you know, I mean too much, too little. It's that kind of stuff. Do you have fun with social media? Do you like it? Do you go on it? I have an Instagram page. Our casting office now has an Instagram page.

We really resisted it for a long long time, and the younger people in my office encouraged me to have it so we can talk about all the shows, not from a bragging but congratulate the casts who are opening in such and such or oh, look, the trailer for Color Purple came out, shouldn't we help promote that. So we're just starting that and then I'll go on Instagram sometimes, but people in my office use it all the time, you know, so that's a great way to find young actors.

Well that's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's why I kind of.

We're on TikTok all the time from a sense of looking for talent or dancers who are so amazing that they can post things.

Yes, because we can't go see them.

But also, you know what, I'm involved in this project right now, this television project, and I not kidding like sometimes I think some of these TikTok personalities and Instagram personalities who write and kind of create some of it is unbelievable and they have millions of followers, and I feel like, even as a casting agent, you would kind of want to know, Oh my god, oh like yeah, like Benito, like that incredible Benito. I can't think of his last name. He's amazing and he has like four million followers or something, and you look at him and you think, like, oh my god, like that person can do everything. He acts, he writes, he sings, he does costumes, I mean he does. He's hilarious, and I think he is, like, ultimately someone so incredibly castable. Benito Skinner is his nose especially, and we love each other and we know each other.

It just kind of popped into my popped into my.

Oh no, we have literally cast people leads and musicals because we saw them on TikTok, you know, because it's like a constant audition.

It's a constantin so in that sense we love social media and that sense. All right, so let's go into this.

I feel like every single queen listening to this podcast is going to want me to ask this question, which is what are you looking for in an audition? I mean, usually you're probably casting a specific thing, so you're looking for a vocal range and a color hair or a color eye.

Or something like that, right, or a comedy if they're doing you know, and just like that Sex in the City, you know you're looking for someone. But the general thing is someone who's going to come in And it sounds so cliche, but who in this stark, unrealistic kind of room, right, And I know it's a cold room coming into audition, yes, but someone who's gonna move me and someone who's going to make me feel something that I haven't been feeling all day. I mean that sounds a little tricky, but someone who's going to engage in the material, whether it be that song or those five pages from Sex in the City, and they're going to make me think differently, and they're going to make me understand where they're coming from and where they're going and really make a choice. And that comes from being prepared and you know, coming in and owning it. But there's nothing better when you sit behind a desk and it makes you get up, you know what I mean, because you're seeing somebody emote or feel and instantly and that always excites me.

Is it personality that you can perceive? Is it technique that they're extremely good at acting? Like, what is more motivating to you? Do you prefer someone to walk in and go like, oh my god, that person is insane.

We have to cast that. Or do you like better when people breathe and how to breathe and not how to really really make a sound when they sing?

You know right now, I like the first you know you know what I meansality? Yeah, that the whole personality is able to come through the material through the song. You know that it makes me feel you say Annalie Ashford before hmm? I mean she was doing that when she came in for one line in the Sex and the City movie, or to be the understudy in the Legally Blonde musical, like everything that you saw in Sweeney Todd.

She brought that to one line in.

Sex and the City and you could feel, you know, as the girl that was understanding you just get it.

There's a whole.

Character there, and there's a whole world that makes you go, I need to be with her. I need to see more of it.

Right, So you're telling me that it took Annalie Ashford a minute to start working and.

To get no, yes, a minute.

I mean when I started seeing her, there might be like five projects that I was casting that she did like one or three lines, and then once she did those, then it was like you just watched her go here here.

Just yeah, only because I've been watching her for at least what ten years, And it's funny.

It's true.

She did have a real trajectory, you know, whereas like a lot of other actors don't.

You don't know who they are, and then you do know who they are, you know.

Right, So back to this idea about what people do in casting rooms or in auditions, right, is there something that you can automatically say, like, just don't do that?

Why does everybody do that? Is there one thing?

Yeah, when they come in and they just start apologizing and it comes out of insecurity, and it comes out of fear, and it comes out of nerves. But it's not helping them because they're doing exactly what they don't want to be doing, but they're doing it, if that makes any sense. They go, oh, I'm so sorry that I didn't watch Yeah, you know, and I don't have I didn't bring in all my music, or I didn't get to read the script. Sometimes it's too much info, you know, Just do the audition, I mean.

I have a really funny story.

When I was in performing arts high school, Alan Parker was making fame, and that was the summer that I graduated. He shot that movie the summer of nineteen seventy eight or whatever the hell it was, right, and he auditioned all of us in the class for the parts in the movie. He ended up working with, for the most part, older actors that looked younger, like Irene Cara was twenty and she was playing fourteen, you know. But here we were these fourteen year olds like auditioning, and I remember like walking into his office Bernie, and the part was for that character called Montgomery, and the part was like skinny, redheaded, and I forgot what else it was. And I said to him, excuse me, mister Parker, I am none for three, so I don't know what the fuck and he slaughed so hard. And then later in my life, like literally right before he died, which was recently, someone said, you know, I was talking to Alan Parker and he remembers meeting you in nineteen seventy eight and you walking into the office and going, I'm sorry, but I'm none for three.

I don't know what I'm doing here.

So It's like you're saying, don't apologize, except I was going, please don't cast me, you know, And so I guess what I'm saying saying, is there really anything you can do wrong or right? You know, besides what you said being prepared? Is there a secret, Darling, a secret?

You know? The secret is knowing when you come in the room that everybody there wants to cast you. I mean, everybody wants it to be the perfect blind date, right, And it's like, I mean it sounds cliche, but be your best self so that they'll want to see you on a second date.

You know.

I always think every audition is like a blind date. You know, when you go to a blind date, you're looking in the mirror, you're thinking about what you're wearing, You're thinking about what you're going to talk about. Like all of that thought process goes into that date, so to speak. So every audition you have to think of as the same thing that everybody wants it to be good.

So just be able to breathe and be who you are.

But you said something amazing, which is that people want to cast you when you walk in. That is not what you feel when you walk into an audition. I feel the exact opposite of that. You feel like these people are so bored, they just want to go home.

They just had luck? Did they have luck? Think about a better chance?

But think about why are you walking in the room thinking that? No one said that to you? But that is exactly what eight out of ten actors are thinking. So it's a thinking thing. It's like, why think that way when you could think, oh my god, they're so excited I could maybe get this part today.

Wow.

This is it's like a crazy, crazy simple thing. So what you're saying is the best possible thing to keep in mind when you're in an audition, which is that people are dying for you to be right down. Part This we don't get.

Now, this we do not get because it's you have to accept it's already a given that you're in a profession where you're not going to get every job that you go in for. I mean, architects don't go in for as many job interviews as an actor does. Dentists stone, So it's a given you're not going to get a job. So stop thinking about not geting getting the job.

I want to ask you, as an expert in so many things.

Is there advice you can give, first of all to casting directors or people who want to get into theater or movie casting or even production on that end of it.

Is there advice that you can give someone.

Yeah, if there's a young person who wants to go into casting, that is great because we welcome that and there are so many things that that person can do. The Casting Society of America has a website that has all of these programs for new really young people. I mean, our office has fellowships. But really it's about start taking note of everything you're watching or seeing and write down who did you like in that episode of All in the Family or who stood out for you when you went to go see that show. Figure out who that was in the place that you liked. Start keeping track of your taste and the actors that you like, and not just the obvious Robert de Niro and Meryl Streep of course we like them, But who did you like when you went to see Flowers of the Moon, even if it was like a small part, and recognize and look up on IMDb who played that part. Like, there's so many things you could do as a young person. I tell that to the young assistance in my office. It's like start keeping encyclopedia of the actors that really turned you on or that removed you, so that when you do have that casting interview or that casting job, you know, I hope you can talk about the actors that you saw and that you liked and go see everything. You have to watch everything you can have to go see and go see everything if you're wanting to go into casting.

You know, can you teach this? Can you teach taste?

Yes, I think there's something you can teach. You can't teach taste.

I mean I don't know, can you in your world?

You know?

I mean it's a tricky I know it's a tricky.

Not no, I mean talking about the same world, because I'm thinking about like performing arts high school and them kind of knowing at these auditions or with musicians, especially with musicians, there are people who play beautifully, but they just have terrible taste. And like if you're a jazz musician, they do with solo and it's like, oh, stop playing and they're great and technically it's so great, and the breath control and it just sounds boring or trite to something.

So that's the one thing you can't teach, you know, right, you can acquire a taste, you can acquire better taste. I don't know if you can. You have to start with a.

Very very young, young, young spirit to influence how they see things, to influence their taste. But I don't think you can teach tastes. You know, have you mentored anybody? Have you felt very strongly about?

Oh?

Have you find casting agents to work at Telsey and Co? What is it called Telsey and Co?

Telsea office?

Yes, you know, before the shutdown, we used to have a huge internship program for three month months and it was out of those interns there was always the star intern who then I winded up hiring as the company was expanding. You know, there's thirteen fifteen senior casting directors here and ten of them were interns at one time. I mean they've all been here twenty nine to fifteen years and they all were interns at one time. Right now, we don't have an internship program. We have a fellowship program, and that's how we're finding new casting people coming up the pipeline. You know, we've done a real good job in the last three years of having much more members of color in our casting field.

Oh, which is great? Which is that's what interesting?

I know, Darling, do you like casting Broadway shows better than you like casting movies or TV?

You could be honest, no, I can you know?

And this is like the honest answer because I get asked all the time. I think because I'm lucky enough, and I kissed the ground because I get to work in all three mediums. It always rotates. So just when you're like, oh my god, how can we keep doing this Broadway show? Then I get to do a movie and it's up and it's out in three months. And then I get to work on a TV show and that's like faster than hell. You have one week to find a whole cast and then the episode's over, right. So I really do love all three. I like the ongoing collaboration that happens in the theater because it lasts so long. You know, even if I in film, I have repeat directors like Rob Marshall or John Chew that I've been lucky enough to work with, so you have a lasting collaboration, but sometimes it's so short that you don't, you know, get the lifeline right in the theater, you know, it's eight years of Hamilton or twenty years of Wicked. Oh so you're working with the teams for twenty years, so.

That I thought, I swear to god, this is such a surprising answer to me, because I thought you were going to say I'm lucky enough to actually have such a big stake in the Broadway because it's such a tiny, tiny Broadway is really not a very I.

Mean, that's what's a joy the theater because of that, you know what I mean? But is that why you live in New York? Like, that's why I thought.

That's why I say to myself, if you really had designs on casting every movie and every street movie, you probably would have moved.

To LA right. And I love the theater.

I mean that's why I have mcc as well. And so yeah, the theater is for me the thrill.

Right. And by the way, like three out of five flights I take to Los Angeles myself a year. I see you on I've never run into a person on one particular path more than you. It's crazy, Darling. Has there ever been like something that you went like, oh god, I can't believe I just why did I cast that person in that part? Oh?

Of course, But I'm not naming that here, are you crazy? Sure?

Okay, I won't name it either, But like, so that doesn't affect your business people and go like, yeah, that was a disaster or something.

When I go, I mean, it doesn't seem like it because you know, no, I don't think so, but no, but there are times where I have felt when like, oh, I wish I showed them a better option, you know, or another option, or sometimes you know you can't help it.

Say I thought, I said, been the other guy the O you know, yeah, exactly, Well, go ahead, don't listen to me. I don't listen to me.

And then I have to ask you a few questions about your personal kind of commitment to it. Like I think that every single artist, every single person who works in the arts, there's some kind of like a commitment. Do you have any regrets? Did you sacrifice anything in your life in order to have this incredible position and this incredible place in the world.

Uh, well, that's such a good question. That's like a therapy question.

I know, I know it is a therapy question, but yeah, I think I love what I get to do every day, and I feel bad at times that I don't have any other things in my life, you know, as close as I am with my sons and Anne, and we are all very close. Like I wasn't there for such and such, or I wasn't there for such and such, right, you know you know what I mean? So sometimes or sometimes the family stuff, and then I wouldn't know what else I could do because I was spending so much time doing MCC and the casting. Like I don't have any other trade, right, I don't know if that's bad. I don't want another one, but I get it.

I get it. Tell us a little bit about MCC.

What is MCC.

Yeah, it's a not for profit theater company, an off Broadway theater company that's been around thirty eight years that I founded with the late Bob Lapone and Bill Chandler. And we are on fifty second Street between tenth and eleventh Avenues. Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg. That's our theater. I mean the casting office is here too, but that's the theater. We have a two hundred and fifty seat theater and we have a black box one hundred seat theater. And it's this wonderful complex that, thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, started to build that We moved in in twenty nineteen finally because we used to be down at the Lortel, and everything is here. The offices are here, are our high school programs after school, so the building is filled with high school students, or it's filled with Gavin Kreele rehearsing his show that starts next week, or Jason Robert Brown's shows and auditions because that starts rehearsals in December. So it's like a little campus over here with the two theaters and the rehearsal rooms and the offices.

And what is the mission? First of all, what does MCC stands for.

It was Manhattan Class Company because we all came out of an NYU class at least the original family members, but not a great name, so we just go by MCC, you know. But it's to work on plays and musicals that get you as an audience to talk whether you like the player, don't like the play. We always say there's going to be a third act, which is when you leave talking about the experience, you know. And we like to do things that push the envelope a little bit, or that make you care or make you question.

Is there a role model for MCC like, did you go when you were a kid? Oh, if only I had a theater company, Like, was there one specific one that you were exposed to that you really admired?

No, I don't.

I mean Circle Rep. I guess you know it doesn't exist anymore. But as a young person coming to New York, and I would usher there all the time. And gods, you know, chool right was on Seventh Avenue and Sheridan Square, my goodness, and they were doing new plays, and they were developing actors, and they were developing playwrights, and they were it was a home for artists. And I think that's what I've always responded to.

Right, I mean, because when I was a kid, and I keep going back to my experience at Performing Arts High School. That saved my life, Darling, That literally saved my life because I had this really parochial, kind of tiny little box that I lived in, and then somehow a teacher said you don't belong in this box. You need to audition, and she helped me and I got in and I realized at that point when I started going to that school, that life wasn't some scary, horrible thing, but there was actually this wonderful aspect to it, which was this thing I was very good at, you know, and it saved my life.

And I wish I could find like some kind of national charity that did.

This, you know, that kind of And I'm not talking you know, like I'm on the board of New forty two, which is great, but that's a very specific agenda. I'm talking about like arts education, wherein you go into classrooms in Kentucky and you say, here's a bunch of money for like a Shakespeare class or a fencing class, or a tumbling or whatever it is. You know, like a modern dance class. That is what I would really like to do. And like, so far, I haven't really found that group. I don't really think they exist because I don't think so either. No, we need to found this group, Darling, because I do think art saves people's lives.

You know.

We're yeah, one day at a time, Yeah, totally. I mean it, It really does.

Know.

It's why mcc we started this high school program.

It's a program for after school for high school students, inner city kids who want to learn about the art. It doesn't it's not about whether they become an actor or whether they become a playwright, but to be exposed to what theater and can do, and it's the gift. It's unbelievable. And you know, we've been doing it for thirty years and we keep in touch with all the alumni and some of them go on to be professional actors.

But you need that.

I feel like I was given that luckily by one teacher who dragged me to a community theater.

It's all about the teachers.

And I feel as though the lessons to be learned from the lessons of the theater or the performing arts in general are so much more essential and important than like certain kind of like maths that they teach in school.

And it's like I will never use this information, you know.

Whereas like if you could give someone an acting class or a theater writing class, or a classical music class or something like, there is so much more. Oh my god.

Yeah, whether you become that or not, that gets you through life. I have one final question for you. Do you have imposta syndrome?

Because I do not syndrome syndrome, but I do.

Go who the fuck are you?

You know?

Like I say that, like right, like why is this movie? Start writing me back, like why are they writing me back, like you know what I mean, Like, so, yes, I'm always like, pinch me. I just was talking to so and so you know right, yes, still I'm in awe that I get to do this.

So yes, I do have that.

And Darling, I am obsessed with obituaries, Like that's the first thing I do in the morning. I open the New York Times and I literally go to the obituaries. So what if you could write your own obituary what you wanted to say? You're not answering the question. I would answer the question.

I would just say happy. I am just happy. That said so so weird, but I am just ye happy.

What do you mean you were happy in your life? Yeah, and I am.

Happy every day. Like I get excited about getting up in the morning. I can't wait to start the day. And I wake up and I'm ready because you don't know what's going to happen today. Even if I have twelve things on my calendar. It's like, oh my god, I'm getting to talk to Isaac.

You know what I mean.

Well, Darling, my friend Peter just said this to me. He was like, life is so fabulous, even the problems. It's also challenging, and so I was like, who are you? Because I don't really do that. I kind of have to pull myself out.

I know so many people know even the problems are a challenge for me, Like I'll take the problem and turn it into a challenge, Like how can I.

Wow, make that go away? Where did you get it from? I got happy for my dad. I mean, you know, he's a little clueless, but he's happy, you know what I mean? Yeah?

And I don't know where I got the other thing, the constant battery of like, oh well, why can't we do that at midnight? There's still another hour left, right, you know what I mean? I don't know where that came from. I really don't know.

Like the East Coast thing. That's an East Coast thing? Okay, Well, Darling.

Besides a production of Victor Victoria starring me on Broadway, which I know you really want to task. Do you have some dream project that you've never done that you want to do?

Oooooh?

I feel like the musical Carry Even though we at MCC gave it another shot ten years ago and it was great, it also wasn't finished. And I always hold on to doing that again because the score is really good and I would love to be able to somehow tell that story again.

I'm there, I am there for Opening Night on that one, Darla. Okay, so what do you want to promote?

Promote people to pay attention to who casts that TV show that they love or that movie that they love? But projects, I hope everyone goes and sees The Color Purple, which starts between Christmas. So it's the new color Purple, which was so fun to work on, having done the Broadway show, the Broadway Revival and then get to do the movie.

News flash, everyone is going to go see the guy. I know it's really good, really really really good. Oh my god, amazing.

Stopcast Valang, I'm val.

It's really good.

All right.

I love you and I love you all right, thank you.

I just love everything about that conversation. Okay, seriously, I love how it came from nowhere, right. Bernie Telsey's career came from literally someone calling and saying, would you cast this little show called Rent?

And then he was like no, no, no, no no no. He didn't want to.

He went into it reluctantly, and basically it set him on this fabulous, fabulous trajectory. And then also this incredible piece of advice that from now on is going to burn centrally in my brain whenever I'm auditioning for anything, which is that the casting directors you're standing in front of are absolutely dying for you to be great. They want you to be great, And so knowing that just kind of relieves so much of the tension in the room, so much of the stress of the process.

I think that was the real takeaway.

The other thing that I now know about my friend Bernie that I never knew was that he is always this like really positive, optimistic, happy guy. You know, I never kind of knew that about him, And you know, I got to say I relate to that, even though all I do is complain and all I do is like start by seeing the dark side of things. In the end, I think it is this weird sort of optimism that pushes through all of that. Eventually it reaches the upper upper echelons of my brain and I push forward and I do it based on optimism. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. What a pleasure this was today and sort of highlight I think of my experiences so far on this podcast.

Darlings.

If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor and tell someone, Tell a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin, tell everyone you know.

Okay, and be sure to rate the show. I love rating stuff.

Go on and rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts so more people can hear about it. It makes such a gigantic difference and like it takes a second, so go on and do it. And if you want more fun content videos and posts of all kinds, follow the show on Instagram and TikTok at Hello Isaac podcast And by the way, check me out on Instagram and TikTok at. I am Isaac Musrahi. This is Isaac, Missrahi. Thank you, I love you and I never thought I'd say this, but goodbye Isaac. Hello Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio Awfully Nice and I AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by Me Isaac Msrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by Robin Gelfenbein. The senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti, and is executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Carral Welker, and Nathan Klokey at Imagine Audio Production Management from Katie Hodges, Sound design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed by Ben Waltzer. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and Sarah katanak At.

I AM Entertainment

H

In 1 playlist(s)

  1. Hello Isaac

    42 clip(s)

Hello Isaac with Isaac Mizrahi

Isaac Mizrahi is an expert -  at almost everything! He’s an iconic fashion designer, actor, singer,  
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 42 clip(s)