This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:04] Jay Binder: I am the man behind some of your favorite theatrical experiences.

[0:08] Mark Peikert: Ever attended a concert of the Encores series?

[0:11] Jay Binder: I cast it.

[0:12] Mark Peikert: Enjoy Kristin Chenoweth's performance.

[0:14] Jay Binder: I helped put her on the map.

[0:16] Mark Peikert: From Tony-winning performances to memorable ensembles, Binder Casting has assembled the actors who have given you many of your theatrical memories.

[0:24] Jay Binder: Now, I am telling the story behind finding those performers, as well as that of my own remarkable career, one that began in dinner theater and ultimately encompassed almost every major regional theater company and eleven Neil Simon plays.

[0:39] Mark Peikert: I'm your host, Mark Peikert, and you are listening to Jay Binder, A Life in Casting.

[0:48] Mark Peikert: So I’m excited to speak to you because I think that casting directors are one of the unsung heroes of all of entertainment, and particularly in the theater world, because you guys are instrumental in creating the performances that we cherish.

[1:07] Mark Peikert: So I know that you started off as a dinner theater director.

[1:14] Jay Binder: Yes.

[1:15] Jay Binder: That was when I first graduated college, actually in 1970, and that's when dinner theaters, you know, were all over the country, and I started directing, and that's where I had the opportunity to cast most every Neil Simon play, which put me in very good stead later on.

[1:35] Mark Peikert: I just, whenever I hear dinner theater, I think of Kevin Kline and Soap Dish.

[1:40] Jay Binder: Yes, me too.

[1:41] Mark Peikert: Doing Death of a Salesman. Is that typical of dinner theater at the time?

[1:46] Jay Binder: Uh, no, actually, it wasn't that bad. I mean, you know, they did, you know, every commercial play, you know. Um, but uh, I don't think I'm, I think I'm the only person in the world that's ever directed and rewritten a play called Right Bed, Wrong Husband, and gotten rave reviews in Kentucky. If you ever want a script of Right Bed, Wrong Husband, you know, call me.

[2:11] Mark Peikert: So how did you make the move from director to casting director? Because that's not a typical career shift.

[2:18] Jay Binder: It was by accident. Um, I opened an office in 1983, uh, because I couldn't get a job that paid me as a director.

[2:33] Jay Binder: And we opened the office with a woman named Jane Jennings, uh, who left the business. But we opened a small office on 54th Street in one room in 1983.

[2:44] Jay Binder: But prior to that, uh, the person that really started me off was Leonard Soloway, who was Manny Aisenberg's general manager.

[2:58] Jay Binder: And prior to that, I had been an independent producer, and I had the opportunity to assist Bert Chevaloff, who wrote Forum on Happy New Year, and I had the opportunity to cast Lolita by Edward Albee.

[3:12] Jay Binder: That was 1980 and '81. And uh, Leonard said, uh, go down and meet Edward Albee and Frank Dunlop, the director.

[3:22] Jay Binder: Uh, and I was petrified, and I went down to the Alvin Theater, the Neil Simon now, which was also uh a premonition.

[3:31] Jay Binder: And uh, Edward Albee said to me, uh, there's a part of a one-armed actor in my play. Can you find me a one-armed actor?

[3:39] Jay Binder: And I said, left armed or right armed, and I got the job, and off we went uh to an infamous out-of-town trial, but it was with Donald Sutherland, right after Ordinary People.

[3:50] Jay Binder: And then I opened the office in '83.

[3:54] Jay Binder: And I was very lucky that we had two clients, American Stage Festival in New Hampshire and The Hartman in Stamford, Connecticut, where I cast Kate Burton in Missalliance.

[4:11] Jay Binder: Kate has been a part of my career since the Hartman since Missalliance.

[4:17] Jay Binder: And in those days, when I called uh several important agencies, I won't mention the agencies and who knows who the agents were.

[4:29] Jay Binder: And I said, I'm casting Missalliance. And of course the agent said, Well, who's playing Missalliance?

[4:34] Jay Binder: So that gives you some idea of the knowledge of classical theater.

[4:39] Jay Binder: And the other story I'll never forget is I was doing a Shakespeare play at the Old Globe.

[4:48] Jay Binder: And one of the agents from a very important agency said, And will Mr. Shakespeare be in the room?

[4:53] Jay Binder: I swear to you. No.

[4:56] Jay Binder: I swear.

[4:58] Jay Binder: That's, you can't make this up.

[5:01] Jay Binder: And then we started to get a reputation.

[5:05] Jay Binder: Mark Brandon, uh, who joined us eventually, and Jack Bowden, who started with me.

[5:10] Jay Binder: Uh, we started to get a reputation, and we were then asked and invited to cast several regional theaters, which really served for me as a master class uh because I got the opportunity to cast most every Shakespeare play, uh, many Chekhov plays, uh, new plays, and contemporary plays.

[5:33] Jay Binder: And it was uh an incredible experience learning how to do it by doing it.

[5:40] Mark Peikert: So in the early years, you were certainly doing a lot of regional theaters and a lot of theaters around the country. But you were based in New York. What was the process like of finding those casts? Were you importing New Yorkers? Were you on the ground there doing auditions with local performers? What was the scene like in those?

[5:58] Jay Binder: We never did local auditions. Uh, there were always casting directors uh in each theater uh that were in charge of that.

[6:05] Jay Binder: Uh, but every single theater came to New York in those days to cast the majority of the plays out of New York.

[6:17] Jay Binder: So that, and that's, you know, was a great, great opportunity for me because that's how I began to learn actors and know actors.

[6:27] Jay Binder: Because when I started, uh, I really didn't know.

[6:30] Jay Binder: And if it weren't for uh Johnson Lift and Zerman, uh, who were incredibly helpful to me, uh, you know, they actually helped me tremendously until I got, you know, comfortable and started and really, you know, began to know how to do it.

[6:46] Jay Binder: Uh, and you know, I was so lucky at the Huntington because I got to work on plays like Cymbeline.

[6:53] Jay Binder: I mean, Cymbeline is rarely done, and J.K. Simmons was in Cymbeline.

[6:56] Jay Binder: We got to do uh Pal Joey, which Richard Greenberg wrote an adaptation, and uh, Donna Murphy uh starred uh as Vera.

[7:08] Jay Binder: Uh, you know, at the Huntington, we got to do uh Aristocrats uh by Brian Friel, uh, which Kate Burton was in.

[7:16] Jay Binder: Uh, we got to do uh Molière, we got to do, you know, some incredible things at the Huntington, and it was a complete education.

[7:30] Jay Binder: Uh, and Louisville was remarkable for me and for Jack.

[7:37] Jay Binder: Um, the Humana Festival, which was one of the really only major new play festivals, along with the O'Neill Center, and we cast the Humana Festival for many years, and it was basically in rep.

[7:55] Jay Binder: Uh, the three theaters, and they were in rep.

[7:59] Jay Binder: Uh, and the most exciting thing was working on new plays, and each, each there was a team of two writers that had to have the same cast.

[8:12] Jay Binder: And we were doing uh two plays, one written the only play I think that William Buckley ever wrote, and Joyce Carol Oates in the same room.

[8:24] Jay Binder: It was absurd. Absolutely absurd.

[8:31] Jay Binder: You know, so I began to um to realize that so much of this business of casting is really the key to it, of which I've never really truly mastered, is letting and and making sure that the authors, the director, and the producer really feel that they have complete ownership of their choices.

[9:00] Jay Binder: I must say that, you know, one story about Williamstown when we were doing All My Sons, Barry Edelstein was directing in 1996, and we couldn't find a cast that would go.

[9:14] Jay Binder: I mean, we, you know, and so Barry trusted me, and I said, listen, I'm sending you Joe Costa, who was uh a wonderful but never fully recognized actor, and of course the fabulous Linda Stevens.

[9:26] Jay Binder: And Barry trusted me.

[9:28] Jay Binder: And so, you know, that's the exciting thing. When you work with a director that trusts you and is, well, he really had no other choice, but he did, you know, as did, you know, Jack O'Brien in so many ways when we were doing Hamlet at the Old Globe?

[9:45] Jay Binder: Uh, he wanted a young student Hamlet.

[9:49] Jay Binder: And I had cast Campbell at uh the North Shore Music Theater, uh, Matine A Shakespeare Theater, uh, Shakespeare uh theater at North Shore, as Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet.

[10:01] Jay Binder: And so when I brought up Campbell, Jack said yes immediately without auditioning Campbell, and that led to his first movie with Julia Roberts.

[10:09] Jay Binder: So that's the joy of casting is when you have a relationship with a director that trusts you, uh, with a writer that trusts you, and when you can make a difference by casting an actor that leads to wonderful things in their career.

[10:32] Jay Binder: And it would have happened with all of these people because they are so gifted.

[10:37] Jay Binder: But I just happened to have the project that they were right for and the timing.

[10:41] Mark Peikert: Has that changed over the years, that uh the necessity of trust? Because in those days you didn't have self-tapes.

[10:51] Mark Peikert: You didn't have something that you could very quickly show someone.

[10:54] Mark Peikert: So people really had to take your word for it more than ever with the result of technology.

[11:01] Jay Binder: It all depends on the director.

[11:04] Jay Binder: Fortunately, any actor that a director doesn't know uh that won't audition, which is a whole other topic which I somehow uh agree and disagree with on depending on uh who it is.

[11:04] Jay Binder: But if you don't know, if a director doesn't know someone well, then it's so easy to get tape, you know, uh off, you know, off their websites or, or their agents have their reels which they can send.

[11:04] Jay Binder: So, you know, technology has been a tremendous help, uh, and so that's very helpful to me, uh, but it's not as exciting.

[11:04] Jay Binder: Uh, you know, it really isn't. It's uh, in the days before uh technology, I mean, it was really about more trust, as you say.

[11:04] Mark Peikert: Yeah, well also in those days I imagine it's much less exciting to sit in Ripley Greer under fluorescent lights than it was to sit in the theater of the Winter Garden and have someone audition on the stage.

[11:04] Jay Binder: Absolutely. I mean, all the Neil Simon plays, every single play uh except in Brighton Beach, when Neil began, you know, to become uh more ill than he had been in the past.

[12:27] Jay Binder: But every single, every single play we auditioned on the stage of the Broadhurst, uh, or you know, where one of Neil's plays were running.

[12:37] Jay Binder: Uh, and uh, that was exciting because also the difference between auditioning in a room and auditioning on a stage is completely different.

[12:49] Jay Binder: I mean, what can be so wonderful in a room at Pearl uh is completely different on a stage on Broadway.

[13:00] Jay Binder: And that's because all plays for years, uh, when it was, you know, not as expensive, uh, were produced and cast in theaters.

[13:13] Jay Binder: Manny Eisenberg, of course, when you had a play running uh at the Broadhurst or at the Neil Simon, you know, uh, and you had a play running and you were Emmanuel Eisenberg, who was before he retired, one of the great and major producers working in this, the working in the American theater, you know, it was easy for Manny to call the Schuberts and say, I'm using the theater, and it was his.

[14:01] Mark Peikert: You did eleven Neil Simon plays with him, right?

[14:04] Jay Binder: Yeah, I, yep, absolutely.

[14:05] Jay Binder: And most of them with Gene Sachs, uh, some with Jerry Zaks, some with Joe Mantello, uh, one with Joe Mantello, one with John Rando.

[14:16] Jay Binder: Uh, but uh, the combination of Gene Sachs and Neil and Manny Eisenberg uh was a magical combination.

[14:28] Jay Binder: In fact, uh when I was first asked by Manny uh to work on Rumors, uh he called me and he said, Listen, call Neil Simon, call Gene Sachs, and if they like you, you can do this play.

[14:48] Jay Binder: So I just I was a nervous wreck, and I called Neil Simon and I called Gene Sachs, and I thought the best thing to do is just start working. They can't stop me. I was very nervous. I was very nervous, and it was it was my dream. It was what I wanted so badly. I kept saying, you know, when is it gonna happen? When is it gonna happen? And it did. And so we got there the first day, and the first two actors came on, and they were very well known, and they weren't right. And I was saved by one of the most remarkable actresses we have working today.

[15:27] Jay Binder: Christine Baranski was the third person that walked on the stage, and Neil Simon didn't fire me. Uh, and Christine Baranski was cast and was brilliant, and that was the end of that. And then she won the Tony.

[15:45] Mark Peikert: How did you know that Christine Baranski was going to be a Neil Simon performer?

[15:50] Jay Binder: Well, the thing about it is, you know, I had seen her um in the Stofford play, uh, and I thought she was brilliant. I also knew that she was classically trained. She had played Doreen in Tartuff. Um, you know, she had she had really paid her dues in regional theater, playing all sorts of roles, and she was a great, great actress. And this and the trick to Neil Simon was to not try and be funny, but to behave and to understand the character's behavior, and it's the point it's Neil's point of view about the behavior that's funny.

[16:32] Jay Binder: Uh, we did a reading with Marcia Gay Harden of a play that never happened, and Marcia Gay is a great actress. She called me hysterical, uh saying, I Jay, I can't do this. And I said, of course you can. She said, but I'm not funny. I said, that's the best thing you can say. Just come in and be the character and let Neil do the work.

[16:55] Jay Binder: And that is the trick. When we were doing Lost in Yonkers, uh, it was very difficult to cast the kids. And we spent a year casting the kids. Uh, it was as difficult casting Eugene Morris Jerome when we went to do the revival of Brighton Beach. We saw hundreds and hundreds of kids. Of course, with Lost in Yonkers, we came back to the first person I showed them, uh, which was Danny Gerrard.

[17:22] Jay Binder: And uh Lost in Yonkers was very interesting because they originally offered it to Maureen Stapleton, and Maureen couldn't do it. I then had the idea of Uta Hagen, which everybody loved, and Uta Hagen clearly had no interest in doing it. And so I thought of Irene Wirth. Uh they went to London, Manny and Jean and Neil. They went to London and they met with Irene Wirth.

[17:48] Jay Binder: And who, by the way, is from Kentucky, but had been living in London for so long, and everybody thought she was English. And you know, they were very nervous about whether she could do a German accent. And they went through the lovely lunch, probably at Claridge's, I think I can't remember. And finally, Jean asked her if she had any trouble doing a German accent.

[18:11] Jay Binder: And she was offended. And she said, Are you asking me to audition? And they thought, well, well, I guess that's it. I guess she's not gonna do it. And so when the dessert cart arrived, she ordered dessert with a perfect German accent, and uh she did it for them.

[18:29] Jay Binder: And uh that's how you know she got that role. And Kevin Spacey, funnily enough, uh was not available the day that Manny and Jean and Neil could all be together in New York. Neil uh had to go back to California, and we had original cast Tony Shalhoub, and Tony, you know, for whatever reasons and I understood them, was doing a one-man show, we're preparing a one-man show at ART, and he couldn't do it.

[19:01] Jay Binder: He didn't want to do it, and so I called everybody. I called everybody, and I said, What about Kevin Spacey? And Neil got on the phone, and Neil said, grab him. We grabbed him, and that's how that part of the cast.

[19:18] Jay Binder: But the most exciting thing for me about that is Mercedes' rule. And I had seen Married to the Mob, and I'd seen Other People's Money, and I knew Mercedes' rule was it, and Neil had an office in LA. Uh, I sent Mercedes to Neil, and Mercedes read. She was exactly what Neil wanted. Neil called Jean, me, Manny, and said, fly her to New York.

[19:43] Jay Binder: She flew to New York, read for Gene, and got the part, and was shooting another film while we were rehearsing. So she was shuttling back and forth on a plane from LA to New York during most of the entire rehearsal period, which was amazing. And that's how valuable she was to the success of that play.

[20:11] Mark Peikert: Well, I can't think of another team similar to what you and Neil and Gene Sachs had in terms of a writer, a director, and a casting director. What was your relationship with those two men like? What were the what were the powwows about casting like?

[20:28] Jay Binder: There were never any powwows. As Marsha Mason told Neil very early on in their relationship, which was prior to me working with Neil, Marcia said the absolute truth. The actors pick us. We don't pick the actors.

[21:00] Jay Binder: Circumstance which we'll talk about in the Broadway years, where I had to redo the audition material to prove to 15 people uh involved in making decisions why they were going in the wrong direction without telling them. Do you know what I mean? Which is part of the casting director's job to make sure to devise ways in which people can have ownership. And sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

[21:26] Jay Binder: But we read Neil and Gene and Manny and I had a very good relationship. I was always so thrilled when Neil laughed because he wasn't laughing at his own material, he was laughing at people bringing his material to life.

[21:46] Jay Binder: I mean, you know, when when you have people like Nathan Lane in Laughter on the 23rd Floor being, you know, the embodiment of Neil's uh fictitious Sid Caesar, when you have Lewis Stadland, when you have John Slattery, when you have uh Randy Graf, when you know, when you have those people, those are great artists.

[22:10] Jay Binder: And even the plays that I didn't cast, I mean, when you think of Christopher Plummer and Francis Sternhagen and Judd Hirsch and Marsha Mason, and uh were produced and cast in theaters in the end, to speak very briefly about Brighton Beach and Broadway Bound, which was a real crime, uh, that it was not received.

[22:33] Jay Binder: And well, it was going to be in it was going to play in rep together, and they only opened Brighton Beach Memoirs, right?

[22:40] Mark Peikert: Right.

[22:41] Jay Binder: And I had always wanted to open them back to back, you know, one night, but you know, for whatever reasons they didn't. That cast, Lori Metcalf, Santino Fontana, Jessica Hecht, uh Alexandra Sosha.

[22:54] Jay Binder: Yeah, I mean, uh it was an amazing group of actors, an amazing group of actors. And Santino, I mean, I was so nervous, not only finding the next Matthew Broderick, which took a year, but finding somebody that could, you know, be as brilliant as Jelko, uh Ivanik, I mean, but when Santino brought so much to it that I knew instantly, and that's why to this day, you know, I Santino is one of the great American actors we have today.

[23:36] Jay Binder: You know, there's nothing he can't do. I mean, uh, you know, I'm sad that people like Brian Darcy James never got to do, you know, a Neil Simon play. Uh, that uh Calista Flockhart, who did a reading uh of a play, um, was not what that particular director envisioned.

[23:57] Jay Binder: And uh she never got to do, but you know, Callista, thank goodness, you know, in my regional days, did Cordelia in Lear uh and uh did a uh a new play by Arthur Kopit. So, you know, when you see an actor that you know is going to be special, uh, and when they are and are given the opportunity, that's the great reward and joy.

[24:27] Mark Peikert: Who I'm curious, who were the people that you would bring in most frequently for projects during the Neil Simon years?

[24:33] Jay Binder: The one person, you know, that uh Neil fell in love with, and rightly so, uh, was Kate Burton.

[24:42] Jay Binder: Um, I mean, because you know, she created a miracle. I mean, she was cast as his as the representation of his daughter coming back, you know, to see the mother that had passed away. I mean, Neil, you know, so many of the plays were based on his history with his first marriage with Joan.

[25:17] Mark Peikert: Joining us for a little bit is Kate Burton.

[25:20] Kate Burton: And Kate, you have worked with Jay from early on in both of your careers. He he worked with you a lot when he was casting regional theater, right?

[25:30] Kate Burton: Correct, yes. I um I would say I graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 1982. So pretty much almost from the get-go, I was, you know, Jay was bringing me in um for shows, and um it he was such, I mean, still is such a huge part of my life, but the truth of it is that those those first 10 years, 15 years, even longer.

[25:57] Kate Burton: Uh, you know, we've always worked together in one in some fashion. And uh, but those early years, he was extremely important in my life because he was an incredible, not only bringing me in as a casting director for so many different kinds of projects, but also an incredible advisor uh in my career.

[26:18] Mark Peikert: What is it like when you audition for someone who has displayed that kind of faith in you? Does that change how you approach it?

[26:27] Kate Burton: Yes, I mean, just certainly the biggest uh the biggest thing for a young actor, you know, is the you know, is is dealing with the audition process, which by the way is very different than the acting process. What you have to do to get a role is very different from what you have to do to act in the role.

[26:47] Kate Burton: And when you have someone who's in your corner like Jay is, uh, it gives you confidence. And as time goes on, um, it just helps you feel less nervous. And because the whole notion of what I tell my students at USC is, you know, when you walk into an audition room, the casting director and the director want you to be as great as you can be.

[27:13] Kate Burton: They're not looking to like catch you out. It's not a test of like, oh, I know, you know, we're gonna put this person through some kind of torture. It's actually they want you to do your best. And it's a really hard thing as a young actor to wrap your head around that. You you still think, oh my God, it's like, you know, I'm in the, you know, the firing squad is in front of me.

[27:30] Kate Burton: But but what was wonderful about my relationship with Jay is that he helped me to have the confidence, and I developed, I kind of had it quite naturally because I'd grown up in show business. But in truth, because I'd grown up in show business, I actually needed someone like Jay in my corner even more.

[27:52] Kate Burton: So many people were, you know, treating me like Richard Burton's daughter is walking through the door. And so he really knew me, you know.

[27:59] Jay Binder: So it was it was extremely helpful. One thing I knew Kate could do, Kate, even from the very beginning, coming right out of school, she could do anything. She could play Shakespeare, she could do Chekhov, she could do Shaw, she could do contemporary work.

[28:16] Jay Binder: And to be honest, you know, there are certain people as actors and as people that when you know them, you instantly fall in love. And so it was really easy when you're in love with someone's talent, and when you're in love with somebody as a person because the kind of person they are, and which makes them the actress or actor that they are, which is, you know, to very intertwined.

[28:46] Kate Burton: Uh, and that's you know, how our relationship has always been and still is.

[28:53] Jay Binder: Yeah.

[28:54] Kate Burton: I mean, the other thing too is that, you know, I uh one of the things that as I have uh entered into my uh 62nd year, I'm I'm I'm always really honest about my age, is that um, you know, one of the things that's really I think different now is that there's a different set of rules.

[29:15] Jay Binder: Well, who knows what the rules are, uh, especially now in this terrible time we're living through.

[29:20] Kate Burton: But um, but but that, you know, when I was coming out of drama school, the sort of notion of a classical theater education was what you did if you wanted to have a career in the theater.

[29:34] Jay Binder: Um, and whereas now it's different, it's different.

[29:39] Kate Burton: It's I mean, f still the great schools like you know, Yale, Juilliard, NYU, uh, I throw USC in there, Brown, MFA, UCSD in San Diego, you know, they're still trying to do that.

[29:51] Jay Binder: Uh, but they also obviously have to prepare kids for film and television, which my generation really didn't need to do.

[29:58] Kate Burton: I mean, we we did, of course, but we got no training in that whatsoever.

[30:02] Jay Binder: So the fact that we could do Shaw and Chekhov and Neil Simon and you know Shakespeare and maybe sing a little, sing a little song occasionally, as I did, um, you had to have that in your arsenal.

[30:15] Kate Burton: And now now it's kind of different.

[30:17] Jay Binder: And Jay just recognized those those kids, those of us who just had the the theatrical training.

[30:25] Kate Burton: Because, you know, eight shows a week is is no one's idea of an easy time.

[30:30] Jay Binder: Eight shows a week is really hard, and you have to have incredible stamina.

[30:35] Kate Burton: And quite frankly, at this tender age, I only do like four to six week runs now because if I had like a six-month run on Broadway, oh my god, I'd be in the hospital.

[30:45] Jay Binder: I mean, you know, I it's just forget it.

[30:48] Kate Burton: You know, so those years, you know, where you're really uh uh thoroughbred are so important to have incredible casting directors like Jay Binder in the court.

[30:57] Jay Binder: I mean, we went through, I mean, you know, um when we did uh Miss Alliance, you know, we walked uh the actors walked on to a set with more flowers, you couldn't get on it, you couldn't get off.

[31:08] Kate Burton: Uh you needed pros to know how to do that.

[31:11] Jay Binder: And then, you know, the other incredible experience we had is we did Brian Friel's play Aristocrats at the Huntington, which was the Huntington ended up playing a very large part in Kate's life because of Nikki Martin.

[31:26] Kate Burton: And this is before Nikki Martin.

[31:28] Jay Binder: This was Kate's debut, and it was a beautiful, beautiful production.

[31:34] Kate Burton: And I was, and it was a beautiful cast.

[31:37] Jay Binder: Everything about it was absolutely perfect.

[31:41] Kate Burton: And then, you know, uh, we led to uh Nikki and Kate asking me to do the seagull, which was a great honor.

[31:51] Jay Binder: And that was, you know, just a family of a director, a star, and a casting director coming together to create really, you know, the seagull is not the easiest of checkoff plays, but it was absolutely spectacular.

[32:09] Kate Burton: So, you know, and then um we just connected on Neil Simon's work.

[32:16] Jay Binder: Uh, there was a very personal play called Jake's Women, uh, that was I think the most one of the most personal plays that Neil has ever written.

[32:41] Kate Burton: And Neil Simon uh was a very close friend of my mother, uh Sybil Christopher, Sybil, Sybil Burton and Sybil Christopher.

[32:49] Jay Binder: And so I grew up with Neil's daughters, um, Ellen and Nancy, and I knew Neil's first wife, Joan, who passed away.

[32:59] Kate Burton: And, you know, as you know, as Kismet would have it, I ended up playing two versions of her, one in Jakes Women and one in London Suite.

[33:10] Jay Binder: Um, in both by Neil Simon, and but the Jakes Women experience uh was extraordinary because this was right after Lost and Yonkers, uh, you know, which is definitely, you know, one of Neil's masterpieces, which Jay also cast uh with I just must mention him with our beloved Mark Blum, who just passed away, who we all love so much.

[33:35] Kate Burton: Yeah.

[33:36] Jay Binder: And the truth of it is that, you know, I it felt like it was just really interesting.

[33:42] Kate Burton: It felt like for me to play Joan and for Neil wanting me to play Joan, and for Jay helping, as usual, be the great shepherd, is was just it it really actually changed my life as an actress in a lot of ways.

[33:55] Jay Binder: And to be frank, and this is gonna sound so callous, but it was the first time I got a good review in the New York Times.

[34:02] Kate Burton: Thank you, Frank Rich.

[34:04] Jay Binder: Frank Rich, I'm just gonna throw this out here.

[34:07] Kate Burton: And the great thing was is he had said that my long-awaited breakthrough, you know, I don't read reviews anymore, but it said my long-awaited breakthrough.

[34:17] Jay Binder: And Gene Sachs, our phenomenal director, came up into my room after this review, and he said, Oh, the long-awaited breakthrough.

[34:27] Kate Burton: We've been waiting for a long time.

[34:30] Jay Binder: You know, I was like, oh, okay.

[34:31] Kate Burton: Those guys, I mean, you know, having Jay be our shepherd to, you know, Manny Aisenberg, who is still totally with us, uh, the beloved Gene Sacks and the blue and the cantankerous but beloved uh Neil Simon was uh, you know, it's a theatrical experience.

[34:50] Jay Binder: I will never forget.

[34:51] Kate Burton: It'll be definitely a chapter in my memoirs.

[34:54] Jay Binder: Um, because not only did I I work with Neil, and yet again Jay had shepherded me into this, but also, you know, with some of the great actresses, and of course, the king of kings, Alan Alta, you know, who, and that was my longest, by the way, that was my longest Broadway run.

[35:11] Kate Burton: It did not put me in the hospital because I was quite young in my 30s.

[35:16] Jay Binder: But it was uh it was a very important experience for me.

[35:20] Kate Burton: And I realized, Jay, that I mean, and really you put me into young leading lady roles with like Hypatia Tarlaton, you know, and then you moved me into sort of the grown-up leading lady roles, which was uh aristocrats, and I mean, even though it wasn't a leading lady, it was a fantastic uh supporting role, uh, Julian Jakes Women.

[35:40] Jay Binder: So, you know, there's and then the Seagull, the ultimate uh actress role, which not only was it a family affair because Jay and Nikki Martin were so involved with it, but my own son, Morgan Ritchie, played my son.

[35:53] Kate Burton: So uh he was uh playing Konstantin Gavrilovich.

[35:58] Jay Binder: So yeah, so you know, what can I say?

[36:00] Kate Burton: I mean, it's like I realized when I was um at the Huntington, I did uh four plays, four five plays, four plays, five plays there.

[36:08] Jay Binder: But I did when I was doing uh the cherry orchard uh uh earlier on, um, I went and did uh uh a talk at Boston Latin, Roxbury Latin, I'm sorry.

[36:22] Kate Burton: And uh I I thought that my life had been, you know, I had become an actress and lived grown up being an actor with the plays of Anton Chekhov.

[36:31] Jay Binder: But then I realized, oh, it was the plays of Anton Chekhov, but it was also the plays of William Shakespeare, which I'd always poo-pooed because of my parents', you know, Shakespearean life.

[36:40] Kate Burton: Uh, but I realized also, you know, I can say it's Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Jay Binder.

[36:45] Jay Binder: What can I say?

[36:46] Kate Burton: Well, and we both we both learned, we both in the audition process, we both learned a lot.

[36:53] Jay Binder: Um, Neil always chose very long scenes, and preparing 17 and 18 pages was a lot.

[37:01] Kate Burton: And Neil loved Kate's reading and said to her, Well, go on.

[37:08] Jay Binder: And she stopped, she said, Well, can I take a minute?

[37:10] Kate Burton: And she grabs me in the hall and says, I haven't read the rest of it.

[37:14] Jay Binder: I said, Don't bother.

[37:15] Kate Burton: You are the part.

[37:17] Jay Binder: Just turn the page and keep going.

[37:19] Kate Burton: And then what happened very, you know, which was, of course, um, and it's happened to me once or twice.

[37:28] Jay Binder: Then Kate got a pilot, and she couldn't do the play.

[37:33] Kate Burton: And we are in rehearsal in California, and I receive a call from her agent saying Kate hasn't gotten the pilot.

[37:45] Jay Binder: And I said, okay, give me an hour.

[37:49] Kate Burton: And we had been in rehearsal with you know a lovely young actress, you know, uh, but it wasn't Kate, uh, who was born to play this part.

[38:01] Jay Binder: And so this is the way Neil and Jean and Manny worked.

[38:08] Kate Burton: I got Manny on the phone, and I said, Kate's available, her pilot is not happening.

[38:15] Jay Binder: And within the hour, uh, we had a deal, and I'm on the phone with Kate going, uh, Kate, you're going to LA on Friday.

[38:26] Kate Burton: Yeah, Jay always had this thing where he would call me at 7:30 on a Saturday night, and I'd be like sitting there in my kitchen about to eat dinner.

[38:33] Jay Binder: He'd go, honey, you're on a plane to LA.

[38:36] Kate Burton: Like, like pack your bags.

[38:37] Jay Binder: And I'd be like, Oh my God.

[38:39] Kate Burton: Yeah, yeah.

[38:40] Jay Binder: That's the way, and that's the way it works, by the way.

[38:42] Kate Burton: That's the way it works.

[38:43] Jay Binder: It was the situation then, and it's still the situation now.

[38:47] Kate Burton: You literally, as an actor, you have it's almost like you have to be ready, you know, to go to the hospital to have the baby.

[38:53] Jay Binder: You've got to have the bag by the door, you know, two pairs of underwear, you know, your toiletries, so that because things like that happen so quickly in this business.

[39:02] Mark Peikert: I guess my final question before I let both of you go is Kate, aside from your personal relationship with Jay, what is different about walking into a Jay Binder casting room, audition room, rather than for another casting director?

[39:16] Kate Burton: I think the thing is, I mean, look, I've I've I've worked with all the major casting directors in New York City, and Jay is, you know, the king of kings.

[39:24] Jay Binder: He has the like you feel as an actor that he gets you.

[39:29] Kate Burton: He just gets you.

[39:30] Jay Binder: My sister is a casting director.

[39:32] Kate Burton: My mother used to be a casting director at an early point in her life.

[39:34] Jay Binder: So I've been surrounded by casting directors in my life.

[39:37] Kate Burton: My sister is Amy Christopher.

[39:39] Jay Binder: Um, and I will say that you just feel that he's talked about you in and now knowing what I know now, I feel like he, you know, he's he's prepared the director to see you.

[39:53] Kate Burton: And so that you walk into the room and it feels like it honestly feels like all you have to do is show up because you know that he's done so much of the great groundwork for you.

[40:05] Jay Binder: But also as an actor, as I said at the beginning, he gives you confidence because you know that he's very invested in you doing well.

[40:13] Kate Burton: So it becomes a wonderful collaboration, which by the way, is what theater is all about is collaboration.

[40:20] Jay Binder: And to be honest, to have a great casting director for any director, and I've just, you don't know this, Jay, but I've just started directing a little bit myself, so I'll be calling you.

[40:29] Kate Burton: Uh, is uh the you'll be plays is that it is just they're worth their weight in gold.

[40:36] Jay Binder: Because I'm, you know, I'm I I you know, in the professional world, you have so many people to choose from.

[40:41] Kate Burton: And of course, you've got the agents talking, and you know, so it is a magical alchemy that Jay has to be able to match the the actor with the director, and then if the playwright is still living, the playwright.

[40:59] Jay Binder: I could not be more blessed with the regional theater that I had the opportunity of casting, uh, and the years with Neil and the experiences that I've had, and I we came to be very close friends.

[41:15] Kate Burton: And I'll just end um with when he passed away, uh Bill Evans, his longtime press agent, and Elaine, his wife, uh, and I um organized his funeral, and that was sort of a closure for me, and one of the great responsibilities that I've been asked.

[41:42] Jay Binder: And it sort of closed the chapter, although it will never be closed for me, because it was the beginnings of what led to the great Broadway years and Encores.

[41:59] Mark Peikert: And then we will be talking about the Encore series and the importance of star power, and more importantly, even s even more importantly, perhaps Star Persona, in the next episode.

[42:19] Jay Binder: This is Jay Binder of Life and Casting, a podcast from RWS Entertainment Group and Bender Casting, in association with the Broadway Podcast Network, starring Jay Binder, hosted by Mark Peikert, produced and directed by Mark Brandon and Kyle Coker, with executive producer Ryan Stana, consulting producers Joe Christopher and Abby Buell, artwork by Justin Squiggs Robertson, marketing concept by Kevin Lau, marketing content by Amy Cannon, and a special thanks to guest star Kate Burton.