The Casting Director of Jury Duty talks about casting a unique show "without a script"
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00:00 You are now the jury in the matter of Hillgrove versus Morris.
00:03 When I finished casting this show, the actors didn't even have character names yet.
00:08 So for me, I felt like a viewer in a lot of respects because I didn't know who these people
00:13 were meant to be.
00:14 I knew how great they were and how talented, but I didn't ultimately know what they were
00:20 going to be playing and what it was actually going to look like.
00:23 [Music]
00:35 I'm Suzy Farris.
00:36 I'm the casting director of Jury Duty.
00:38 [Music]
00:41 How long does this normally take if you're using a television?
00:43 [Mumbling]
00:44 You're number 54.
00:46 [Music]
00:47 I received a phone call from Dave Bernad, who is one of our great producers on the show.
00:53 And he told me that he had something for me he thought would be really great.
00:57 It was an ensemble comedy and we don't need defined names, which is always music to a
01:03 casting director's ears.
01:04 I said, "Great, send me the script.
01:06 We'll talk about it."
01:07 And he said, "Why don't we just jump on a phone call?"
01:09 So I jumped on a phone call to learn that there was no actual script for me to read.
01:15 And we went from there.
01:16 Would you be able to be a good juror for this matter?
01:18 I'm a racist.
01:20 Sir, please have a seat.
01:22 I don't know why I said that.
01:24 I've done a few initial days of Jury Duty myself.
01:27 I have never actually been chosen for a jury, much to my dismay because I'm fascinated.
01:33 But I have seen the courtrooms and I've seen the cross-section of people who arrive in
01:38 those jury boxes.
01:39 So I felt like I had a good understanding of what kind of person we needed to cast to
01:45 create something that resembled a very credible Los Angeles jury.
01:50 We were looking for anybody who had a comedy background or an improv background who seemed
01:57 like a real person and could come up with interesting dialogue and was quick on their
02:03 feet.
02:04 And then we ended up having one major callback session one day, which was in the form of
02:12 a focus group.
02:13 We called back about 30 actors who were at the top of our list.
02:18 And then the focus group company actually called in the same number of regular people.
02:25 So we had six different focus groups throughout the day for an hour each.
02:29 And in each group, the actors were not told who the other actors were.
02:34 And the regular people had no idea that there were actually actors amongst them.
02:39 They thought that they were at a regular focus group.
02:43 And that's really where we saw people kind of cement their roles on our cast.
02:49 And some of the other people who we had high hopes for didn't quite live up to what we
02:55 needed.
02:56 My casting process took about 12 weeks.
03:00 We saw over a thousand tapes for all of the jurors.
03:04 And then when we got to more specific roles like the judge and the lawyers, we saw another
03:10 500 or so.
03:11 We had asked for actors who specifically had legal backgrounds so that they could speak
03:17 the legal jargon and come up with the actual dialogue that we needed.
03:21 You look into a fish's eye, into the eye of a stingray, you can see there's like an innocence
03:27 there.
03:28 Like they do not know what is going on at all.
03:33 When we found Edie Modica who plays Jeannie, her callback tape was pretty outrageous.
03:40 She was 1000% committed to the choice that she made.
03:46 And I would say in a lot of instances, that particular choice may not have worked.
03:52 But because she played it so real, you could just see that that was like who she was.
03:57 I'm working at a bar, the one I jacks.
04:00 A lot of motorcycle guys.
04:02 But they respect me.
04:04 Susan Berger is an amazing character actress who's auditioned for me many, many, many times
04:12 over the years.
04:13 There was a moment when the writers thought that they were going to have a character who
04:18 was going to be some sort of rock and roll woman.
04:22 That was the audition that she ended up sending in.
04:25 Ultimately, as you see in the show, they didn't end up doing that with her character.
04:30 But when they saw her, everyone kind of knew that she belonged on the jury.
04:34 I don't know anything about murder.
04:37 I don't know.
04:38 I mean, we did live across the street from OJ growing up in Bel Air.
04:43 Nice guy.
04:44 Whitney Rice is just so fantastic.
04:47 Is this tap?
04:51 She initially sent in an audition tape for a juror.
04:56 And she played at the callback a very entitled woman who really just didn't have much time
05:04 to be there.
05:05 And she was worried about getting to the airport an hour later and had everybody else in the
05:09 room worried about how she was going to make her flight.
05:13 There wasn't actually room on the jury for her.
05:16 But we knew that we wanted her.
05:18 And it was perfect that she was our plaintiff.
05:20 Again, I'm not an actor.
05:22 So I don't know what it is.
05:24 It's a hybrid show that people haven't seen before.
05:27 And it's legitimately funny.
05:29 There are just outlandish situations and characters.
05:33 But they're still credible.
05:35 And I think it's very refreshing for people to see something that they've never seen before.
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