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Casting Thirtysomething and Creating Stars | Marcia Ross, Part 1

Melissa Roth: Weirding Way Media.

[Singing] Amy Englehardt: 80s TV Ladies, So sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, Steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh-[wolf whistle]. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

Melissa Roth: Hello, dear listeners. Welcome to 80s TV Ladies. We look back at female driven television shows from the 1980s and celebrate the people who made them. Here are your hosts, Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert Hatem.

Sharon Johnson: When Susan and I started this podcast, we thought it would be mostly us talking about the television shows we loved and remembered with a, few occasional guests. But we quickly realized that all these people who were involved in eighties television and film have incredible stories to tell. And we wanted to celebrate these talented women and men who made television in the 1980s, many of whom have continued to create amazing work beyond the eighties. Talking with folks behind the scenes has been invaluable in learning about those jobs, but also enables us to examine what has changed since the 1980s.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So, yet another serendipitous 80s TV Ladies story is what brought us our next guest. I'm a member of ALAP - Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights and met a great playwright and producer, Jeff Kaufman, when we exchanged some emails. And Jeff was like, hey, you know, my wife worked for Disney for many years. Did you know her? Know her? Turns out, though I'd never met her, I knew of her because she was the celebrated and brilliant head of casting for Disney Films while I was there. Miss Marcia Ross.

Sharon Johnson: I'm so excited to have our first casting director on our show. Marcia Ross started in New York theater, then worked with Judith Holstra, ultimately joining her to become half of Holstra Ross Casting. Marcia Ross was VP of casting for Warner Bros. Television for five years, and the EVP for casting at Walt Disney motion pictures for 16 years.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Just a few of the films she cast includes Streets of Fire, Clueless, the Princess Diaries, Ten Things I Hate About You. And she is credited with introducing new talent such as Heath Ledger, Anne Hathaway, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Jennifer Gardner. The list goes on.

Sharon Johnson: We are so thrilled to welcome her to 80s TV Ladies, and it's so special to have her here in person in our little studio. Hello, Miss Marcia Ross.

Marcia Ross: Hello.

Sharon Johnson: Very nice to have you here today.

Marcia Ross: Thank you so much.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We are so excited to speak with you. And it was so interesting to discover that we were both at Disney at the same time. Yes, but I don't think we've ever meth.

Marcia Ross: No, I mean, I came to Disney. I started in January of 1995, and I was there through, about, February, March 2011.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So you were there longer than I was. Yes, but I was there your entire tenure. I knew, I knew your name.

Marcia Ross: Yeah. Well, I ran the feature film casting department, and when I was hired initially, I was doing, you know, Disney, and then Touchstone, and then they. And there were separate Hollywood pictures. By the time I left, it was all one.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Marcia Ross: So we were over. I was the first tenant in the Frank G. Wells building.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay.

Marcia Ross: All right. Yes. Because Roy O. Disney was right next door, and then there was commissary on the other side. Yeah, that's Roy O. Disney.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Marcia Ross: All right.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, that's where I was.

Sharon Johnson: And I, was in the ABC Riverside building because I started working at ABC, and end of 2000, I was assistant to Alex Wallau, who was the president of the Network. And I just retired from Disney about a year and a half ago.

Marcia Ross: So you were there quite a while.

Sharon Johnson: I did, because it was my intent when I went there that this was going to be it, my last job. And I managed to make it work that way for me.

Marcia Ross: So that's great. Yes, it did work out great.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. I was in marketing, right. I knew I started in behind the scenes. I ended up running the digital marketing department, which was a fun ride, but mostly because a lot of people got fired.

Marcia Ross: Well, that's like the thing there. Every time you turn around, people are getting fired. You know, when I first met Bob Iger, Bob was actually at ABC. You know, he was head of production. We did thirtysomething. I think he was president at that time. Right? Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Sharon Johnson: Let's start at the beginning. Tell us about how you got into casting and your interest in casting initially.

Marcia Ross: So I grew up in New York. I grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, more famously than where Denzel Washington was born. That's where I'm from. And Mount Vernon is very close to Manhattan. And my parents took me to see my first Broadway show when I was eight, which was Oliver. And then I saw Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly when I was ten. And I was pretty much from a very young age, hooked on theater. Wow. By the time I was in high school, I was really going to theater all the time. Every Saturday my mom would take me to the train. I would go in by myself. Of course, tickets were so cheap then, you know, $5, you know, for rear balcony,

00:05:00

Marcia Ross: $3 to stand. I mean, you know, I saw everything.  

You know, when I would go on Wednesdays was when I was out of school or if I get, you know, a parent to take me at night if there was something. So when I went to college, I ended up being. I was a theater major, but I did not want to act. I mean, it was too practical to be an actor. And I just didn't feel like there would be a place for someone like me. And I did some acting in high school, but that was about it. And at that time I thought I'd be a stage manager, and that's what I was doing when I was at Northwestern in the theater department. But they didn't have a program in stage managing, so an opportunity came up with the National Theatre company, which was a, theater company by the Barry and Fran Weissler, who are now very big Broadway producers. But in those days they would send out these productions of children shows. So I went to work for them. When I was, I guess, 19 or 20, I was sort of the assistant. We had the two assistants to the stage manager. And at the end I got an equity contract and we spent two months rehearsing and seven months on the road with the adventures, of Tom Sawyer.  

We traveled all over the eastern United States, schools, this and that. And when that was over, I, you know, I didn't really like all that living out of a suitcase, which is kind of, almost like an actor's life too, really. And I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And I started working at Circle in the Square in New York. I worked in the subscription department, and I didn't really know anything about casting. I didn't know what that was at that time. I mean, I knew agents because I knew actors had agents. And I got a job when I was 22, working in a small talent agency for a man named Monty Silver, who had incredible tastes. It was a small agency. It was a lot of opportunity for me. And while I worked for Monty, casting directors called and I started to talk to them on the phone and learn about what, you know, what was that relationship?  

I became a talent agent when I was 23, and I was sending people out on regional theater and commercials. But I, didn't really enjoy it. I found it very frustrating because I love talented and I love finding people and I love being able to, like, help people. And, you know, as an Agent I had a lot of frustrations because I was at the mercy of all these casting directors, whether or not they would see this person that I found. And I went to the theater five nights a week. So I was always looking for new people and an opportunity came up. I, got an introduction through the late Jeremy Ritzer. Feuer and Ritzer were incredible casting directors, by the way, in the seventies and eighties. I mean, they cast Bob Fosse, you know, they talk about eighties casting, so much incredible work. Someone who was a great mentor to me also Shirley Rich, who put Meryl Streep in her first television things.  

I mean, there were some great casting directors in New York in those days. And I got my first job in casting at ah, CBS television in New York. I was assistant to the head of casting. What we did was that we would bring talent into all the LA casting directors that came to New York to find people. And that was our job, to go out and see everybody in New York, find people and bring in the likes of Tom Hanks. I mean, those were the sort of people we were bringing in then. This was the late seventies, I guess, 1978, ‘79. So we were doing that.  

And at one point I was working with a casting director named Judith Holstra who I ended up working with for eight years. And she'd come to New York on a pilot called, oh, Love at First Sight, with who was in it? Philip Levien and Susan Bigelow. I mean, this is now, you know, 1980, the start of 1980. I worked on this pilot.  

Anyway, at the end of the week of showing Judith actors and working with her on this because my boss had had to rush to Los Angeles for a crisis. So I was just alone with this woman, helping her. I asked her because I thought, you know, maybe like I needed to go to LA. I'd never been to Los Angeles, but maybe I needed to go to LA because there wasn't a lot of opportunity. There were features in New York, but there wasn't a lot of television like now. And she actually offered me a job. And so I said, well, you know, I can't leave during pilot season, but I'll come out at the end. And I, and I did.  

And I, I ended up moving out there, to Los Angeles July 3, 1980. So I was there for the eighties and that, you know, because that show got picked up and you know, I really didn't know a lot of actors. I knew a lot of actors like theater actors and actors I'd seen on stage, actors I'd seen on television. But the kind of day-to-day actors that you need to know when you're casting a television series, that's a whole new thing and there's not a lot of time to do it. And she just threw me in.  

I mean, I have to say, you know, she's truly my mentor. Everything I really based my whole kind of how I ran my own business and worked as a casting director comes from the things that I learned, you know, in those days, the eight years I was with Judith.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And what were those things?

Marcia Ross: Well, particularly how to deal with people, you know. I mean Judith had great taste. So I have to say I was very, very lucky because I worked for several people. My, also my boss Rick Jacobs when I worked at at CBS I worked for three people who all had great taste in actors

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Marcia Ross: who all were very like mentor-y and also were willing to give me a lot of opportunity. But in casting, you know, casting's like a, what I call like a threefold thing. My favorite part of course is the actors. It's you know, finding new people. I mean it's the most exciting real part of casting is all those new people and you know it's a lot of readings and a lot of seeing things and all that.  

So you do that and then theres the next part which is making the deals and dealing with all the business aspects of it. its great to find an actor but if you cant make the deal thats a problem. And that can be very hard dealing with a lot of agents and managers and lawyers. But really, and this is the thing I think I learned most from her is dealing with all the personalities that make the decision because you have to get a lot of people on board to agree.  

You also have to get people to see what you think is good because you can bring in people that they don't get but you know they're the right people sometimes. I mean there's countless actors you can bring in that don't get the part who go on to other great success. But you know, this is working with all the personalities and I think that for the best casting directors is an incredible skill. So I learned a lot about watching her, how she really interacted with people and a lot of stuff. I mean in the eighties that's where I was. I was with Judith from 1980 to 1988 and then it was sort of time to move on.  

You know, I had been offered a job at CBS to go back to CBS as a low-level executive when I was 27. But Judith had said I want you to become my business partner. Holstra Ross Casting. And I thought, you know what? I turned the job down because I thought, you know, something I told who was Jean Guest (Jean Haden-Guest) who was head of CBS at the time as head of casting there. And  I just said, you know, I think that it's more important for me to become a good casting director now. I think I will be a better executive down the road if I really am a good casting director.  

But then there was an opportunity that opened up at Warner's. In 88, the person who had been head of casting was moving to New York, and I ended up getting that job, you know, because I wanted to try that part of casting. So I was at, ah, Warner Brothers from 88 to 93, and I was running the television casting department there, and I was still always casting, too. I was able to find a way to balance the job with the cast.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's tough being an executive. And, yeah, I.

Marcia Ross: But I wanted to do it. Cause I felt like I needed to keep my skills up. Cause I think when you don't do it for a long time, walking into a room and having to present to directors and producers that first time and have a level of confidence about my taste. So I always wanted to keep that muscle going. So I just, I did. But, you know, when you're an executive, you know this about working at Disney, you don't really get a lot of feedback. I mean, the main feedback is that nobody fires you.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Correct.

Marcia Ross: That's a bad. I mean, that's the feedback. You know, at Christmas, your boss says, okay, you get whatever you get. Or like one of my bosses once said to me, she says, you know, Marcia, I know you would like to have more contact with me, but, you know, just keep doing what you're doing. I only call people when I'm not happy. But when you're in a room with people and you're casting, you get a lot more feedback because you work with the director and the producers, and, you know, they're happy with your work, and they tell you, you feel the positive aspects of it that no one tells you when you're an executive.

Sharon Johnson: And I would imagine you also get to know the taste of the various, producers and kind of what they're looking for and get a sense of that.

Marcia Ross: Yeah. Especially I found true for me when I was at Disney later on. Being a casting executive isn't really the same as being a casting director. Casting executives oversee the casting of other work and other people's casting directors. You cast your casting director along with the director and producer who they have either worked with before or they meet some new people, but you're supervising the process, which really basically means you're an intermediary between their casting process and your executives who are going to be signing off on, this casting, and also an intermediary between the deal making process and the attorneys or lawyers that are making the deals and the agents.  

As an, executive, I found what was really great was there was this sort of whole other layer of closeness to the decision-making process. I felt as an executive, I could even be more effective with the thing I loved most, casting new people, because, you know, these people knew me and they trusted me, and these were the ultimate decision makers, and I could also help support the filmmakers.  

And I'm gonna digress with one story about Channing Tatum. I was casting a movie, and, I'm trying to remember if it was Annapolis or Mr. 3000. But I was asked to meet Channing Tatum, and he came in and he read for me. It was his first audition. I mean, he'd not auditioned for anything before. And, you know, he had so much. There was just something, you know, and, I called him back because I just thought, the guy has something. I mean, he hadn't done anything, but he had something. We didn't end up casting him, but a few years later, we were casting the first Step Up,

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Marcia Ross: and Ann Fletcher, who was directing it, and he auditioned. That's who they wanted to cast in the lead. He at that point was still unknown. And I got that tape, and I saw, oh, my God, that's the guy. That's the guy. And so that when I went to my boss, I don't remember who it was. It was Nina Jacobson. I don't remember. I had so many different people that I worked for.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Lots of bosses at Disney,  

Marcia Ross: lots of bosses. But I just said, I have been in the room with this guy. This guy is a star. I know it. I felt it then. And so I was able to support their film that way. And that comes out of the fact that I cast 30 movies while I was at Disney. Crazy. But I did do that.  

Anyway, I left Warner Brothers. They were merging with Lorimar. That really wasn't a place for me. I went back on my own business. I went right back to work. I was doing tons of television. I wanted to get back into film because Judith and I had done at least one or two films a year. So I had a regular business.  

And then I got a call from somebody at Paramount. They needed a casting director for it was a major feature film. Big producer, big director. They really didn't have any money, and that was Clueless.  

And I said, yeah, I want to meet on that. So I ended up casting that. And right when I was coming to the end of that, somebody called me again. The person who was at Disney was leaving. Did I want to go meet?  

And at the time, you know, my business was going very well, and I was getting back into film. And I thought, you know, they're not going to hire me because I've just had all this career in television. But everything's an approval thing, so if I go and I meet these guys, which was, David Vogel and Donald De Line at the time, and someone says, oh, what about Marcia Ross to cast this thing? They go, we met her. Yeah, we like her shorts. So I went on the meeting, but I wasn't sure. And I really, I owe a lot to these two guys.  

One of them is Adam Schroeder, who was my day-to-day producer. The main producer was Scott Rudin. And he said, do you want me to ask Scott to call? And at the time, I said no, because I wasn't really sure I wanted the job because then I was going on. Also, I was casting Bound, which was the first film for the Wachowskis.  

But they called me back and I decided that if I was going to go on a callback, then I had to really want the job. And I figured, yeah, it'll be like a five-year job, like my job at Warner Brothers, you know, I'll leave that job at the end, just like I did when I left Warner Brothers, where I was working all the time. But now I would have all these new relationships.  

I went back on the interview, and I think they also, it turned out like the fact that I'd had a lot of executive experience, that there wasn't going to be this big learning curve for me. And then Scott Rudin called, which, you know, at that time, having Scott Rudin call was a big deal. And I got that job, and I ended up being there for 16 years. And then that ended when a certain person was getting rid of lots of people. Because at that point, you know, all this, you don't have to put this in, but, you know, you reach in corporate life, it's a.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You reach a certain point.

Marcia Ross: You know what I always say about corporate life, you serve at the will of the king, which is, that is a new king. Sorry. You know? You know, sorry. But it didn't matter because I had really always planned to go back on my own business.  

Honestly, I thought I'd go back after five years, not 16. But in the interim, I had a daughter. You know, I was able to really create a department for myself that really was fantastic. I mean, I was casting a couple movies a year. I was overseeing. I worked with some incredible people over there who really trusted, and I had an opportunity to cast some incredible films where I discovered people and these people trusted me and let that happen. So I felt very effective.  

And then I went back in my own business, which I was in for seven years. In 2012, I met Jeff, who's my husband now, and I started producing documentaries with him, which is what I've been doing. And I didn't really stop casting, probably until around 2017, because we were just traveling so much for the films everywhere that I didn't need to do both anymore. I can honestly say I was talking about this with some casting directors the other night. And by the way, fantastic news. We're finally getting our casting Academy Award, which has been denied. The casting directors saw that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Congratulations over.

Marcia Ross: We've been trying since. I don't know. God knows. I was saying to David Rubin, who used to be president of the academy, but he's a fantastic cast director. I went to the academy with him as like, 96, 97 Mike Fenton, the late Mike Fenton, a great casting director, had been part of this group of people, and Mike couldn't go one day, so I went with David, and Arthur Hiller was the president then. I mean, it's been a long haul to get the branch to get the Academy Award.  

But I say from, I just feel like I really had a great career. I did everything I wanted to do. Could I have still kept casting? Yeah, but it would have meant I couldn't do a lot of other things I was interested in doing. And I didn't really think there was more I could really do that was different than what I had done. I really feel because of Zoom and what happened during COVID it's not returning to the

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Marcia Ross: way it was very minimally, where you're in the room with people, that incredible experience of having somebody walk into the room.  

I'll tell you another casting story, and I'll tell you exactly this casting story. I was working on this movie, Murder in Mississippi, and it was the eighties. It had been a feature film at Warner's, but because they had done that Mississippi Burning, they didn't feel they could just do another one. So it went over to television and I ended up casting.  

I had gone to New York to do some casting, and I met Andre Braugher. The late Andre Braugher. What a great actor. You know, he had just graduated Juilliard. I think he maybe had done a Kojak. And he came in to read for me, and he was so great.  

So I gave him a callback. And I don't know, sometimes, you know, callbacks don't go great. And his callback, because I was raving about this actor and the callback didn't go great. I said, I texted and whispered to my director, you know, maybe could you tell, you know, could you talk to Andre a little more about the. I don't know. I said something.  

So my director, my producer, and then Andre read again, and when he read again, they were sobbing. Everybody was crying. He played, Dave Dennis, I think, who does the, eulogy for, you know, the three civil rights workers that were killed. He was a real person.  

Anyway. I mean, that's the kind of thing, you know, when you're in a casting session that happens is like when you're at a screen test and you see two people read together and there's this magic and, you know. You know, when you saw Paul Rudd read with, actually with, Alicia Silverstone, you couldn't deny what was happening. You know, you're not really in the room the same way anymore. It's all. Most of it's on Zoom.  

So I'm sort of glad I'm the age I am and had the career that I had when I did, you know, being a casting director in the eighties and the nineties or. And even into the two, you know, it was a great time.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes. And I was going to say, I'm so excited to hear about Bound, because I saw that at Sundance. Was it at Sundance?

Marcia Ross: Yeah, I saw it at Sundance. I didn't finish. I started. I brought in Gina Gershaw. I had started casting it for them.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Marcia Ross: And then I got the job at Disney. So Nancy Foy ended up taking it over. But I cast a couple parts, and then I didn't finish it. I couldn't finish it because, yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I mean, that was just so exhilarating. It was the time when you would be somewhere and you would see the magic happen. That doesn't happen anymore. Whether it's magic in a casting room or, you know, being in the early days of Sundance, when, you know, you could tell which films were about to pop and they didn't come in that way. Right. Like, people know before Sundance these days what films to be looking for, right? And sometimes it's done well, Sundance.

Marcia Ross: I started going to Sundance in the eighties, in those days, and, I mean, when I was in Warner Brothers, I was going, you know, you'd go to a movie and the actors would stay for the Q and A. You could go up to them, or you'd see them later on Main street, and you'd walk up to them and give them your business card and say, hey, you know, if you don't have an agent. If you have an agent, here's my card. Like, when you're in LA, I'd love to sit down with you in the office, which happens all the time.  

I went to Sundance for 14 years. By the time I stopped going, that was no longer happening. And that's, you know, it's just, they're all. It's like a celebrity. It's a great way to launch a movie and do publicity, and I understand everyone needs to do it. I said to somebody, I remember, because I would go every year, and I would do these reports for my group, you know, up and coming talent.  

But really what it did was it became later on an opportunity to see people that everyone knew one way in big movies, do something different in a smaller movie. And then you could go and say, cause again, that's part of, as a casting director, you're a little in a Rolodex, which is, well, did you see this? Did you see that? Did you see that? You know, oh, no. But they were like this in this movie, I think. Cause we. I remember seeing Matt Dillon. I'm just. I'm, having a memory now. I remember seeing Matt Dillon in a movie at Sundance, and then we were casting something, and it's like, Matt Dillon. Like, nobody could picture Matt Dillon. But I said, well, I just know Matt Dillon. You know, you can get the film and you can show them, and then it changes people's minds. So you must have that sort of vocabulary when you're a casting director.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's amazing.

Sharon Johnson: One of the interesting things that you were saying is that as you took on executive roles, you continued to do casting. Do most casting directors do that, or is that.

Marcia Ross: No.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, most of them let go of that day to day kind of.

Marcia Ross: It's, a different. Yes. I mean, I don't.

Susan Lambert Hatem: They're very different skills.

Marcia Ross: Like, it's a different skills. A lot of people who are executives now kind of came up as executives. Some did some casting. I mean, the older people, who are executive-izing now, they have come. Many did. But in the newer realm of things, they usually just started, with somebody who was a casting executive, and they trained on their desk and they learned it's a very different skill. It's casting. Sure, you got to have good taste. You got to know how to work with people. You got to understand deal. You got to understand all that thing. But you're not out there in the trenches seeing the thousand, the 500, or, whatever it is that you

00:25:00

Marcia Ross: need to see.  

You know, you're supervising people and sort of some often orchestrating very delicate political situations. So, no, I don't know. I mean, you know, what happened was that Warner Brothers, I did it because there were times that it just wasn't busy. But when I came to Disney, they were, you know, they, thought I was kidding, I think at the time, because it actually became an issue. I said, listen, you have to, I'm not going to take the job. If I can't still cast from time to time, I won't be happy, really, because it really was the more creative part of the job.  

The first job I did at, ah, Disney was direct to video as Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. It's just sort of all of it sort of snuck under the radar, you know, kind of thing. But, you know, over time, what happened was that some of my executives, you know, Nina Jacobson and a couple of others, they liked having me cast things because I think there was a feeling that there was more control over what was happening because I was right there in the room. And also it saved a lot of these productions money because I had my staff doing things that would have had to come out of a budget.  

But I didnt do a lot because I didnt want to take work from casting director. So I want to clarify something. I never ever did a movie that came with the casting director or producer, and director wanted a particular casting director. The only movies that I ever cast were movies that it was like a brand new person. They did not have a casting director unless they requested me. I had a job. So the last thing I was ever going to do was take a job from another casting director. So the only jobs I did were ones where I was asked to do it. And also there was no casting director who should have had the job right away.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And was that Ten Things I Hate About You, one of those?

Marcia Ross: Yes, that was one of them.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We also watched that recently.

Marcia Ross: It really holds up.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Totally holds up.

Marcia Ross: It really holds up. Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. And oh my God, those performances are magical. They're so captivating. Heath Ledger is amazing.

Marcia Ross: Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Julia Stiles is amazing. Joseph Gordon Levitt is amazing. They're all amazing.

Marcia Ross: Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So tell us about that, that experience. Cause you cast that one.

Marcia Ross: Yes. First of all, Gil Younger was the director.

Susan Lambert Hatem: …and it was his first movie.

Marcia Ross: Movie, yeah. Yeah. And you know what I have to say about Gil that I loved? I've worked with a few directors like him, and when an actor would come in and they, audition, he could give them like a note and a good actor could get the note and just change the performance. Like, he knew right away, oh, they took the note. They didn't. But he knew what note to give. You know, it was like he knew what to tell actors to get what he wanted or not get what he wanted. You know, that was amazing.  

And he was also really decisive. So, like, when I brought in Gabrielle Union, which was her first movie, even though another movie she did came out first, I never brought another person in for that part. I mean, he was like, that's it. It's her. She's that part. That's it. He just knew, you know, he knew. He felt it, and he was decisive.  

So Heath Ledger came in. He was in town from Australia, and he'd actually done, I think, a movie two hands, or he had to go back and finish this movie two hands in Australia. But, Steve Alexander was his agent at CA at the time, and he said, I've got this guy, and will you meet him? And he came in, and he read. And actually, his reading wasn't great when he read for us in the office, but there was something different and unusual about him, and I really trusted Steve's taste, and I thought, well, Steve went to sign this guy if there wasn't something. So, I said, look, make sure that you really read the script and work on the material. Really be prepared this time, because I was willing to give another chance because I just thought, there's something. I don't know what it is, even though this wasn't a great audition. And when he came in to read, oh, wow. The next time he read, he was completely prepared, and he was fantastic.  

And so, you know, we continued to have readings. In the end, we did screen tests, you know, that we had to do screen tests, and we tested a couple of other people, and Julia and Heath, and we mixed, and we matched. But then, of course, you know, Julia was, had just done some really interesting independent films that had been a Sundance, and nobody knew who Heath was. So, like, okay, well, we're making this movie, and, like, with two people no one ever heard of, so, you know, who are we going to put around them? Okay, so that also became part of the casting thing.  

And Joseph Gordon Levitt was on Third Rock from the Sun, and so he had some name value. And, Larisa Oleynik had been in Clarissa, and, the actor that played Joey, who's not in the business, I was able to bring in all these magazines because he was in every teen magazine on the planet. So, we were able to assemble around them, some really recognizable names. I was thinking about this too, because I saw Alison Janney in something, and we had this teacher part, and we hadn't cast it. And I remember Donald De Line. He was like, I want someone really interesting in that part. We gotta do something special. We gotta do somebody really interesting. And, I have no idea. I mean, where we came up with Alison Janney, you know,

00:30:00

Marcia Ross: I don't know where I'd even seen her, but she wasn't done that much. She'd probably done some television, but she was unique, and she was up and coming, and it was like, oh, my God. Everyone was so excited because she was fantastic. She was fantastic. Yeah. And then I was up. We did cast a lot of the smaller parts up in, because we shot in Tacoma at the school up there. But I did a lot of the smaller parts. I went up there out of Seattle.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay, that's interesting. The sort of, if, you know, the chemistry is going to work, because it's always a risk.

Marcia Ross: There's always a risk. But, you know, that's why you screen test, because it's either there or it's not. You can't make that stuff up. That's the thing. You cannot make it up. You see it or you don't see it. And, you know, the two actors don't even have to m like each other, even. What, is that sea of love, that famous story about Ellen Barkin and Al Pacino. But, wow, they had great chemistry. So it's on film. That's the thing. The film is a different thing.  

People sometimes say, well, how do you know, you know, what's a movie star? And it's much harder to be a movie star today because there's not enough big movies to cement a person's career, you know, in the firmament like it used to be. But it's not always just the acting, because people can grow and get better as actors. But someone is either compelling or they are not compelling. Compelling. You want to watch the person. It doesn't matter. Even if they're, you know, a little green or a little this or that, you want to watch them. And if you want to watch somebody, that's what makes them a star.  

That's what Heath Ledger, you know, you ask me. Yeah. Or Channing Tatum. I mean, these people come in, they haven't done anything. But, you know, you just know, oh, wait, I'm paying attention. I don't know why. And I thought a lot about it in the last years when I was casting about what that thing is you know that feeling here?

Marcia Ross: You know, how do I know? People say, well, how do you know? I said, well, I just feel it. And I think a lot of casting directors would tell you this. There's a lot of wonderful casting directors working today who've done amazing work, and many of them have worked for quite a while. And they, I think, would all say the same thing. I think when you, you've done it a lot, your brain and your mind and your body are very connected. And your brain, you feel it, your mind just knows and it sends the message to your body before you have time to realize actually thought about it. I don't know how to put it any other way.

Sharon Johnson: Instinctual, it sounds like it does after.

Marcia Ross: A while, you know? And also, you have to trust yourself.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, and you spent your lifetime kind of watching for that.

Marcia Ross: Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And that's as a child, you know, seeing like, who pops.

Marcia Ross: Right. And I did it as a child, as one last story about that. You know, I'd come home, I had all my programs. I used to keep them all. I still have them in boxes in the garage. But, you know, I'd come home with these programs, and I'd be talking to my mother, sit in the kitchen with my mother. Well, this actor, you know, my mother's like, you know, rolling her eyes, but oh, my God, look who was the understudy here, and look who was the standby. And look at who was in that regional production. Like, I was fascinated by all that. So I just had this mind that, could retain a lot of that kind of information, and it was a great interest to me. Yeah.

Sharon Johnson: And I think that's the key. It was of interest. And so you spent time learning it, not realizing that you were going to do anything with it, but just, you were just interested.

Marcia Ross: Right.

Sharon Johnson: That's started.

Marcia Ross: Yeah.

Sharon Johnson: Training yourself.

Marcia Ross: Which is why I feel like when I really got my first casting job, it was like, it's like a Lego, you know, it's like, boom. You know. It was an avocation and a passion in my work. It was like an amazing thing to me to find work that answered all of the things I cared about and liked.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And do you remember what that project was?

Sharon Johnson: No.

Marcia Ross: It was just a job in casting.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was just a job in casting. And that was.

Marcia Ross: It was the first job in casting. Oh, that's it. I don't know how to explain it any other way.

Susan Lambert Hatem: okay, so we're gonna take a quick break.

Marcia Ross: Okay.

Sharon Johnson: We'll be right back. And we're back.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Was there a moment when you were working with anybody, with Judith, maybe where you were like, oh, yeah, this is my career.

Marcia Ross: No, it always was. It was always that I didn't think I'd ever do anything, except maybe my minor was psychology, but you use a lot of psychology in casting anyway, so. No, I mean, I always wanted to be in show business, and I started casting when I was 23, 24. No, I never thought about doing anything else.  

The, only thing I did think was at some point in my life, I did want to do something else, not because I didn't like casting, but because I thought, you know, I'm always so admire those people who are willing to pivot in life and are unafraid. Kind of that fearless thing that people make life changes like that. I started thinking about that probably in my forties, actually, right around the time I was working at Disney, not because I was planning to leave casting, but because I just had this idea in my mind that it might be interesting to do something else someday just because that's a fearless thing to do.  

And then ultimately, when I met Jeff and I started working with him on the documentaries, and I started producing

00:35:00

Marcia Ross: with him. Well, in 2012, my dad died, and I decided to go back to college because I'd never gotten my college degree. And one of the reasons I did go back to college was because I was thinking about this, and I thought, well, I want to do something where I am not casting, but I'm not not casting. So I was still casting while I was going to school.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And what did you wear in.

Marcia Ross: I went to Antioch, but I went. I didn't just take. I needed, like, 48 credits, actually. So when I went for four years, I would do, like, four credits a quarter, you know, because I was working full time. I had a kid at home. It was like the whole thing.  

And the classes were, like, once a week. So I do two classes back to back once a week, and I get my six credits or whatever. And I loved going to school. I loved going to school. I loved studying. I loved reading. I loved talking about all these things that were really things that really interested me, that weren't my work.  

So I realized doing that, that there was a possibility that I could live and not do casting. And then, you know what I did find in the transition to producing with Jeff, in addition to all the relationships that I had as a result of so many years in casting, many of the things that I did in casting, from working on budgets and dealing with numbers and dealing with lawyers and dealing with insurance issues and dealing with talent and being on a set with actors and going to test screenings and looking at seeing what was happening. All those things that I had done in casting lent themselves completely to documentary filmmaking and producing.  

And producing. Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And so when did you start in documentaries? And by the way, the Terrance McNally.

Marcia Ross: Oh, yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Is amazing. Every act of life.

Marcia Ross: Every Act of Life. Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Is great.

Marcia Ross: Thank you.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We had a blast watching it, and I can't wait to watch, Nasrin.

Marcia Ross: Oh, Nasrin. Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Nasrin. Yeah. So that's next on my list. But what kind of drew you to documentaries? Yeah.

Marcia Ross: No, it wasn't him. It was him. But it wasn't him, because I always loved documentaries, and every year when I'd go to Sundance, I'd probably try to see two documentaries amongst the five films a day I was seeing. I just always really liked documentaries because you learn a lot, even if it's not even good, you learn something. You take something from it in a different way than you don't from a bad narrative film, except if you're seeing, you know, oh, I saw a good actor, then there's a lot of value. So I was always really interested, and I remember thinking, oh, someday I want to just come here and just go to documentaries, because I don't have to think about who's in all these things. I could just experience the film. In 2012, he had a film, a wonderful jazz film called, the Savoy King, about Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald and the Savoy ballroom in New York. It's a great, incredible story. And it got into the New York Film festival. So I went with him to the New York Film Festival, but this time I was not going as a casting director. I was going just as his companion, so to speak. You know, he had a pr person who I didn't know, but I could see, you know, all the stuff that wasn't happening around, issues that, you know, pr interviews, a lot of stuff that I could see. Wait a minute. This isn't how it should be. I went to a lot of film festivals. You're at the New York film festival. This person is not doing the job because this is not going to get what it needs without the right person doing it. So when I came back, you know, I started to talk. You remember Heidi Trotter? Did you know Heidi?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, yeah.

Marcia Ross: Heidi was a good friend to me, and she was very helpful. And I started talking to people and trying to figure out things we could do for the film, to do many things. And that's how it really started. This next film, which he had decided to do, was about father, Joseph was a haitian priest who had started the first microfinance bank, mostly for women, in Haiti. And so I started to get involved with that. I was still working, so I didn't go to Haiti till later. And then it was like, at one point I'm like watching auditions for something like, you know, like really in a car, you know, it's crazy. And then what happened was that there was an issue that he had had this whole trip planned. Raise the money, the whole thing. And Father Joseph said, you can't come. There have been all these kidnappings. It's a bad time. And he called me and, you know, and he was very depressed. And I was like, let's talk about it. So we met and we talked about it, and in the end, I just said, well, find a way. You know, we will find a way if we have to get you another. A bodyguard and somebody else. You're going. Which he did end up going, but he said, I have another idea. And he started to tell me the story of actually what became the film, the state of marriage, about Beth Robinson and Susan Murray and Mary Bonatto. But these two small town Vermont lawyers who basically changed the world because they came up with the first legal arguments in the United States for civil, union and m same sex benefits, incredible women whose stories I felt would be forgotten if we did not tell them. And I loved the story. But then he did go. But then I was taking my daughter to New York. She was going to be doing a summer program at NYU between her sophomore, junior and senior year at school. And

00:40:00

Marcia Ross: I was supposed to do a film. And I kept saying, I'm taking my daughter. I'm doing this. And they're like, pushing. And at a certain point, I walked away. I said, I can't, like, you can't keep pushing the start date. You asked me to do this work. You're pushing the start. Then the movie just never happened. Anyway, so I just said, come meet me in New York. Let's go to Vermont and talk to everybody. And so we spent nine days traveling all over Vermont, and we did some work in New York and in Boston also. We went with Mary. Then I started to get more and more. And actually, it was during that film that we met Terrence and his husband, Tom Curtihy, who's a very successful theatre producer now, you know, because Jeff had found out in his research that they had gone to get a civil union when it first became legal in Vermont. And Jeff had lived also, this is the only film we've done where Jeff had actual personal experience, because he lived in Vermont for six and a half years. He had a radio show, talk of Vermont. It was, you know, seven. He did it for almost seven years, five days a week. It was a progressive radio, you know, a talk show. so he was around for all of this. So he knew a lot of these people. He had a lot of connection. So it was incredible. They agreed to let us interview them about it. And we walk into their apartment, you know, in New York City. And, I mean, first of all, I'd seen all of these Terrence McNally plays, you know, so that was one thing. But then you're in the apartment and, you know, it's not just the Tonys, but there's the photos, you know, with this one and that one and this. Oh, my God, you know, this is the theater geek here. So Jeff had said, look, you know, if we like them and we think that, you know, maybe there's a possibility no one's done anything about terrorists. What do you think? We asked them. I said, yeah, let's do it. So we approached them after it took about a year, because Tom, was busy raising money and traveling for, I think, Anastasia at the time. Finally, after about a year, they agreed, and we embarked on making that film. And it was incredible, you know, I mean, going to Angela Landsberg, talk about casting, you know, Chita Rivera, you know, Rita Moreno, people like that, and also people like Christine Baranski and Nathan Lane and some of the other actors. I met Joe Mantella when I was at Warner Brothers because I had seen him in Angels in America at the taper. So I had met with Joe, you know, at a casting meeting. And now, you know, we're interviewing him or other actors. There were a number of actors that I had met back in my New York days, other times in my life. So it was a combination of, like, legends.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes.

Marcia Ross: Being at John Kantor's townhouse and sitting at his piano and playing piano with him, it's life changing.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. The casting of that documentary is pretty great.

Marcia Ross: Yeah. Well, thank you. And I was really, like, great because to get, like, Meryl Streep and also Bryan Cranston, you know, but then again, see, that's from casting, because I knew who to call and who to connect with so that we could get them the materials. The same with Olivia Colman, who narrates Nasrin. I had ways. Doesn't mean she was going to say yes, but I had ways. To get to people. And Jeff was very smart because he did a lot of homework on her, and he knew that she had a very strong interest in human rights and knew a lot about it. So he wrote a beautiful letter, and I was able to get to this person and that person, and finally it got to her.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Get to her. Yeah. Yeah, that's very key. Yeah, that's amazing. And while we're on the documentaries, Nasreen, do you want to tell us a.

Marcia Ross: Little bit about that? So, Nasrin is about, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is an Iranian human rights attorney and political prisoner, and one of the most extraordinary people you'll ever come across in your life. She’s devoted her life to representing women, children, people facing the death penalty. More people are killed there than any other country in the world. Children’s rights, women’s rights. I mean, she’s been in prison any number of times because of her work. While we were making the film, she started representing clients from the girls of Revolution street, which was the movement of people taking the hijabs off in public.  

And she was arrested and sent to Evine prison right in the middle of making the movie. We were able to finish the movie. We still worked on it for a couple more years. And then one of the things we did, which is what we have been doing the last few years, shes home now on a medical furlough.  

But we launched a #FreeNasrin campaign in conjunction with the release of that film. We spoke in front of the European Union parliament and all kinds of human rights groups around the world. Its been seen all over the place, even in Iran.  

But she's just a remarkable individual. And she also, when we approached her about doing it, she said that she didn't want it to just be about her, but the community. So the film is really about her. She's the focus of it, but it's also the community of women that she has worked with in the human rights sphere in Iran. Lots of them are in prison or they've been able to get out of the country.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's a horrible situation, it sounds like, but she's out right now.

Marcia Ross: Right now, she's home on a medical furlough. Right before the movie opened. Well had its premiere in October of 2020. She had gone on a hunger strike to protest the fact that they were doing nothing about COVID in the prisons.  

00:45:00

Marcia Ross: And it sparked like a real worldwide outcry. She did that to bring attention to what was happening to other people, and she ended up with a heart condition. And she had Covid. So she was able to come home. She had, some kind of heart surgery. She's okay now, but she's, you know, going back to prison. She was in prison again recently.  

She's home again because she, you know, the young woman, she was, like, 16 or 17, and she was beaten to death in the subway in Tehran. So she went to her funeral to support the family with no hijab, and they were beaten, and her glasses were broken, and she got a minor concussion. And she was in prison for a little bit of time. But she's home now on bail, so.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It'S terrifying, but also really important, the work that everybody there is doing and that documentaries are focusing on. but how did you guys meet her or get involved in this?

Marcia Ross: Well, before I met Jeff, he'd done a number of smaller human rights films, for amnesty and some other things. And then he had done a film called Education under Fire, which was a 30 minutes film about the persecution of the Baha'i faith in Iran. That's, you know, they can't get an education. They can't own property, they can't own businesses. I mean, it's an incredibly abused minority there. And he came across Nasrin because she was representing Baha'is.  

So, here is this Muslim woman risking her life to represent people not of her own faith. And this was intriguing, and I think, in keeping with what really interests both of us, all of our films have one thing in common. They're about people who sacrifice a lot. They don't make a lot of money. They are in danger, often physical danger, professional danger, all kinds of danger. They're not always rewarded, often not rewarded financially, but they feel really committed to doing work that makes a difference in the lives of other people.  

And Terrence was that way, too. I mean, Terrence was the first really out American playwright who also was putting LGBTQ people on stage in plays in a very real way where people could identify, you know, with it and see it. And, you know, he was. People said he was gay when he was, like, when he was very young, dating Edward Albee, you know, so he never was in the closet. Never. And so he used that in the most positive of ways. And look, it wasn't easy.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Marcia Ross: No one else was doing it. Everyone else was pretend. You know, a lot of. There were a lot of gay people, you know, men, especially. But nobody was out like Terrence. So he was one of a kind.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. Amazing. Okay, so let's go back to Disney.

Marcia Ross: Then, or the eighties or the seventies. I don't know.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Or the seventies.

Marcia Ross: Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You know, well, we got. Okay, a. I have to ask you about Cujo.

Marcia Ross: Sure.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Because I'm a huge Daniel Hugh Kelly fan.

Marcia Ross: Oh, Danny Kelly. Yeah. And he was on a soap.

Susan Lambert Hatem: He was on a soap.

Sharon Johnson: Ryan's Hope.

Marcia Ross: Well, he was on Ryan's Hope, which by the way, Jeremy Ritzer and Howard Feuer, who I mentioned earlier, they cast Ryan's Hope. Danny Kelly was on that soap.  

But I knew Danny Kelly from New York. And actually the first year I worked with Judith, we had a pilot that we did for CBS called Murder Inc. With Danny Kelly, Daniel Kelly and Tova Feldschuh, which, you know, was complicated. But Tova Feldschuh was the female lead and Ellen Barkin played this new aged weaver in this like a small role. So we went to New York and we did some casting out of it. That's how we knew Danny. Well, I probably knew Danny just from being around New York in the seventies, but. Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And Dee Wallace and that was like the first horror film I ever saw in the theater. And man, it was pretty terrifying because it was a dog.

Marcia Ross: Well, it wasn't a. Yeah, it was a dog. Yeah. You know, it's so funny that there's interest. I was contacted a number of years ago by a guy in Australia who's written a book about it and they've just released. I should have brought it for you. You know, I did sort of COVID you know, like interview for the back of the, you know, the DVD special. And they've just released like a 40th, which I can't even believe was 40 years ago.  

I remember working in that movie very vividly. But the 40th anniversary is like a double bonus redone. I'm so surprised with the interest in that movie.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, and it's Dee Wallace. I mean, like it's a great cast.

Marcia Ross: That was right, because well, after et, you know, she was our big name. Yeah, Judith sent me to New York and I remember I was working out of Martin Gage who was an agent in New York. I was working out of his office and we cast Danny Pintauro. I had to go find the kid. That's where I found him in New York.  

But that's why I went to New York. And then Kaiulani Lee came out of there and Ed Lauter. We did, you know, Judith loved him. We brought him in for everything. And you know, some of the parts were cast here and we cast a number of them from New York. But really just because we really had to find the kid yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Was that at the same time that he was in Hardcastle and McCormick?

Marcia Ross: I don't really remember.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Because it's right at about the same time.

Marcia Ross: Yeah, I don't really remember.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, it's around the same time. My husband and I are big Stephen Cannell fans, and so Hardcastle and McCormick is a big one. And so that's between Cujo and Hardcastle and McCormick, I was like, Daniel Hugh Kelly's amazing.

Marcia Ross: He was a lovely, charming man. I haven't seen him in a long time.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, and it was also the Stephen King of it all. It was a very good adaptation, probably the first great adaptation of Stephen King, which was hard, you know, not everybody got that adaptation.

Marcia Ross: Well, you know, now you have special effects, but they didn't. They had like, a real dog. They had an animatronics dog, you know, trying to figure out how to get the dog.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. To be crazy.

Marcia Ross: Which is like, now they just do it in a, you know, CGI.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. So how often are you on set as a casting director?

Marcia Ross: Not really that often. No. I mean, I. That's the thing about casting. You come on early, sometimes very early, if, you know, you're trying to attach a couple of leads, but essentially your work is before they start production. And that is like what I was saying. Then the circus leaves town, and then they go to location or wherever they're going. And the only time you really go to set is if they're shooting in LA.  

I visited the set of Clueless because they were shooting at Occidental. Occasionally, I have visited sets. The last thing I cast was shooting in South Africa, and I went down there because I was, you know, I had never been, and I went on my own. Jeff and I went and we visited the set, and it was great to see this whole place that they built down there.  

But most times, no. Unless, you know, if I was in New York and I was working, then I'd go visit a set for something that Disney was shooting. But most of the time, you don't. You're working on something else already. You don't have time, and then you.

Susan Lambert Hatem: See it all together.

Marcia Ross: Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: What's been the most surprising, like you've.

Marcia Ross: Ever been surprised, you know, I don't know. I can't really answer that question. Cause usually when you're watching it the first time, you're just, like, hoping no one's terrible. And so, honestly, you know, you really, you're not, you know, that would be a surprise you don't want. So, no, I wouldn't say, oh, what a great surprise, how good that person turned out. No, I think it's. Oh, thank God. No one was terrible.

Sharon Johnson: So it's the first time you see it.

Marcia Ross: Usually at the premiere, it was different at Disney. I, would often go to dailies or roll downs or I find a way to go to a test screening because I was really interested in all that and listening to the audience reaction and stuff. But the things that I cast. No, I mean, I didn't see the episodes. I saw them on tv, or I went to a premiere. I never saw them any other way.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right, well, thirtysomething. Now we got to talk about thirtysomething. 1987 breaks ground on television. What, was that like? And how did you go about sort of putting that cast together?

Marcia Ross: Well, that was the last show I did with Judith. We did that pilot, and oddly enough, we never did episodes. But somehow in the contract, there were episodes. And so I did the year of the episodes with you, the support, but the last year we were together, we did the episodes.  

And I just. I remember with the episodes how hard it was at the very beginning because the show hadn't aired yet. It was really interesting. You know, we were really casting at a very high level. We have amazing people, and, you know, I'll go back to the pilot itself, but so we made the, three or four episodes we did before it ever aired.  

And then when it aired, oh, my God, you know, I never worked on a show in my entire life that got that kind of amazing feedback like that, you know, I mean, Ed and Marshall were, like, being interviewed all the time. They were in great demand, and they won all these Emmys the first season. You know, it was. It was incredible then, and it was easier in some ways to be able to get some bigger actors to be on the show at that point.  

The pilot was not easy to cast. I mean, you know, people don't realize, I mean, that, you know, you do lists, you do availabilities. It's pilot season. You know, a lot of people have already taken other shows, or they're on shows. You know, you reach out to people, they pass. They're not interested. They don't want to do a series. In those days, we reached out to a bunch of people who did movies, you know, to do the leads, and they didn't do television series then. It was not like now.  

And I knew Ken (Olin) because when I worked at Circle in the Square, he was the boyfriend of a friend of mine who's still my friend, and I had seen him in the theater and actually I signed him. Monty I had never signed anybody. He was my first signed client. So I knew Ken. But then Ken came to Hollywood and he was having his own career. And Ken came in and he was really great. He's just like, nailed it.  

And then casting the part that Mel Harris played was really, really hard. That was the only part that we really struggled with. And Mel had come in to read and, we'd seen a bunch of people and we were feeling like we didn't have it yet. We didn't have it yet.  

So we decided to call back some people and we called her back with those people because there'd just been something interesting. And then she came back and it was better the second time. And then we had to go to ABC and we had to bring the whole cast. And we had, you know, in some cases, two or three people for every role. So we only had Ken. I'm trying to remember. I don't believe we brought another, person to the Network. 00:55:00

Marcia Ross: But we did bring maybe three other choices for Ken to read with in front of the Network. And you, know, as the day went on and it was a long day, he and Mel, just like we were talking about chemistry. I mean, she came back, you know, let's do this scene. Let's do that scene. And the more she worked with Ken, the more the other people sort of faded away.  

And it was so clear that they had this great chemistry. And Patti was there that day. But I don't know. I think she was reading for another role. But we loved Patti. She was so fantastic. But, you know, she was reading because, Nancy was like one line in the pilot. I mean, she was not, you know, a series regular.  

So she was probably there reading. I can't remember for which part, you know, Melanie or Polly's parts, I don't remember. But we really loved her and we, you know, the guys really wanted to cast her in the show and so we gave her the guest star, which, you know, turned into like a huge thing, which is great because we had such a wonderful actress doing the role. But they were both, you know, really talented. I mean, Ed, you know, they both have, feature backgrounds and so working with them was working at an extremely high level of who you want to get for television, which was incredible, really.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, incredible, especially for them, because like you're saying now it's very different. You can go to feature film actresses and big names and they'll at least read stuff.

Marcia Ross: Yeah. but they didn't have that then.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, oh my gosh, this interview is so exciting, we're gonna have to break. It into two parts.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Stay tuned for our next episode will be part two with Ms. Marcia Ross.

Sharon Johnson: In today's audio-ography, you can find out more about Marcia Ross and Jeff Kaufman's past and upcoming documentary projects at floatingworldpictures.com.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Tell us your thoughts at eightiestvladies.com.

Sharon Johnson: As we've mentioned before, we really appreciate your feedback. So if you like our show, please make sure to leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever platform you use. And please help us make the show by going to patreon.com. 80s TV Ladies as always, we hope 80s TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch. All of which will lead us forward toward being Amazing Ladies of the 21st century.

[Singing] Amy Englehardt: 80s TV Ladies, So sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, Steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh-[wolf whistle]. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

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