Casting Director Nina Gold became part of history as one of the nominees of the first-ever Academy Award for Achievement in Casting, which debuted at this year’s ceremony. However, Gold has worked in casting since the early 1990s, and her successes include Game of Thrones and The Crown on television and multiple Star Wars films, among many other credits. Her nomination came for Hamnet, which stars BAFTA Award and Laurence Olivier Award-winning actor Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare. Speaking with The Times, Gold discusses the casting process and challenges that both the casting director and actors face during the process.
Gold points out that she is always looking for the best fit for a role and, if another actor is chosen instead, it’s not necessary a knock against the actors who didn’t get the role. She explains, “It’s about how the actor’s essence intersects with the character on the page. So the crazy, terrible thing is that normally someone will get passed over, not because they weren’t good, but because somebody else, for some unaccountable reason, seemed more right. And then what do you say? ‘Your face is wrong?’”
As she notes, there is not much to go on in physical resemblance when casting someone to play Shakespeare, so she has to consider other factors. She continues, “Well, when I think about Shakespeare, I think of that one portrait that doesn’t have much detail besides the goatee, right? So instead it became about him being a counterpart to Jessie Buckley as his wife. Her character is so earthbound and embodied, and because everything Paul Mescal has done is about being interior and thoughtful, we thought that could work.”
In fact, Gold says that Mescal instantly won her over in his audition. She reveals, “And in about 15 seconds it was clear this was going to be f***ing great. I kept dropping the camera, it was so good.”
Nina Gold on Auditions and the Challenges of Casting Child Actors
It’s not uncommon for Gold to expect well-known actors like Mescal to audition if necessary. She uses a musical theater superstar as an example. She recalls, “When we were casting for Les Misérables, Hugh Jackman came into this tiny studio in New York, where there was a tap-dancing class in the room to one side and a judo class on the other side. But he came in and sung, and it was incredible: you felt you were going to be blown out of the room by the power of it. But he clearly found it nerve-racking, because singing auditions are the most terrifying.”
One of the biggest challenges for Gold is casting children, as it often requires seeing a significant number of auditions to fit the right fit, especially if, like the upcoming BBC Lord of the Flies adaptation, the project involves multiple child actors. She explains, “With casting kids, there’s no real way around the labor-intensive numbers game of it. Because what you want is a kid who seems to have their internal life readily available for us when they’re on camera, without it seeming manufactured, and you can’t tell who can do that until they’re literally in front of the camera.”
