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[0:00] Mason Bray: So we have Pat Goodwin, a casting director in New York City. He has cast Broadway shows such as Waitress, The Cher Show, Tina, Annie, Finding Neverland, and Chaplin. He has also cast movies and broadcasts for shows such as Jesus Christ Superstar Live and The Spongebob Musical. And finally, Pat was a casting associate for The Greatest Showman and The Wiz Live. Hi, Pat.

[0:20] Pat Goodwin: Hi, thanks for having me.

[0:22] Mason Bray: No problem. How are you?

[0:23] Pat Goodwin: I'm doing well. I'm taking things day by day and trying to, you know, keep myself busy and find something that is making me sane while trying to get through quarantine.

[0:37] Mason Bray: I think we all feel like that. So would you like to start by telling how you got to be a casting director?

[0:44] Pat Goodwin: Of course. When I was younger, I was an actor. I did all sorts of theater productions when I was in school. And I knew that I wanted that to be part of my college education, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure that that's the path I wanted to follow. So it was very important to me when going to college that I went somewhere where I could double major because I also was very interested in law and political science. So I was always half and half between becoming an actor and becoming a lawyer. I went to Drew University, which is a liberal arts school in New Jersey, and it was excellent because it really gave me a very hands-on opportunity to be involved in theater as a theater major and also gave me a deep dive into the world of politics and law as a political science major.

So double majoring there, I sort of was on both sides of the fence my entire time in college and tried to keep those interests in line. And then as my senior year approached, I realized I still had a great deal of interest in both, and I just hadn't made up my mind yet as to what I wanted to do. So I had applied to a few law schools. I took the LSATs and the GREs for some grad schools, and then I applied to some postgraduate training programs, which would get me my MFA if I decided to go to an acting program. At the end of the day, a very smart professor of mine said, I don't think that you should do either of those things. I think that you should try to live in New York for a little while and see where life takes you.

And I did that. I started auditioning in the city right after I graduated from school and very quickly realized that I needed something to do to keep myself busy in between the auditions and also my night job as a bartender. So I decided to intern at Telsey and Company, and that was 15 years ago. For the first couple of years I was there, I balanced my auditioning on the side with my job there because I was an intern for a little while and then quickly became an assistant to Bernie Telsey. And then I eventually just made the decision that I was much more interested in casting and that it was still a way to be an artist and a business person at the same time. The marriage of those two things was very interesting to me. And then 15 years later, here we are. I'm still doing it and I love it.

[3:01] Mason Bray: So a big question I have is what do you notice first when someone walks into the audition room or sends in a self-tape?

[3:08] Pat Goodwin: It's really dependent on the project. I think if we get into the nitty-gritty of what somebody should be wearing or what their look should be like, that can change from project to project. But in general, I think it's really important that the personality and the human being that walks in the room is authentic. And it's clear that the human is just as interesting as the performance that they're giving. I think a lot of people get so caught up in making sure that all the craft elements of what they're doing in an audition are perfect that they forget that we want to see who those people are. We want to see who the human beings are. So I always am very interested in seeing what somebody's energy is the second they open the door. If they feel comfortable enough to be themselves, if they feel like, you know, they can show us a little bit of their humanity in addition to their art. That's always very important, depend no matter what the project is.

[4:08] Mason Bray: So what advice would you give to people that are coming into audition for you?

[4:13] Pat Goodwin: Be prepared. I think if you can just be as prepared as you possibly can, whether that's with material that's been given to you by that creative team and that casting director, or if you're coming in with a song of your own or a monologue of your own, there's so little you have control over when you're in an audition room. And your preparation is one of the things you do have control over. So I always tell everybody do your homework. Make sure that if there's anything you're unclear about before an audition, you're doing enough diligence to make sure that you're double checking and looking over a monologue again or a piece of a song cut that you're just not quite sure of. One of the things that you should remember and that everybody should remember when coming into a room for a casting director is we have no reason to want you to do anything other than your very best.

So if you can be prepared and you can come in with positive energy, wanting to be there, that's so much of the game already that you're ahead of. And I really, really believe that. And I think most casting directors do.

[5:15] Mason Bray: So how do you get jobs as a casting director?

[5:22] Pat Goodwin: That's a good question. I sort of, you know, I wasn't really taught what a casting director did in college, and I didn't really know, and I fell into my internship and learned along the way. I think in the past 15 years since then, casting has become a little bit more known as a career and as something that can be studied and practiced as opposed to so many people my age and older than I that fell into it for one reason or another, whether that was a transition from acting into being a casting director or a transition from directing into being a casting director. But nowadays it's so relationship-built. It's all around other artists that you know and have worked with that come back job after job if you have a great relationship and a good shorthand with them.

A lot of it is, you know, having to network and having to do a little bit of connecting with people that you might not necessarily know in your immediate circle, whether that's at a studio or a network or a Broadway producer, and make sure that they know who you are and what your track record of work is in hopes of working for them if that's a goal of yours. It's very much a networking and relationships industry as a whole.

[6:34] Mason Bray: So are you always proud of the cast you end up with, or have you ever had regrets of the choices you've made?

[6:41] Pat Goodwin: That is such a good question. You know, I am very fortunate that the majority of the people that I have worked with over the years are, I'm not even gonna say the majority. All the people I've worked with have been so wonderful in not only hiring our office and me to work on their jobs, but also in coming to a very, very close collaboration of who they want to hire at the end of the day. And I don't think I have any regrets in terms of folks that ended up being in a show. Of course, I might have not agreed with their first choice or their immediate choice, but that doesn't mean that that person that's a second choice isn't doing a fabulous job once they get in the building and they're going through a rehearsal process.

So I wouldn't say that I have any regrets because so much of what we do is a collaboration. One of the biggest misconceptions about what a casting director does is that we make the final say. We don't. We don't make the final decision as to who is in a production. We're there to serve that creative team's vision and making sure that what they want as an artistic product is going to end up on stage. So the good thing about that is, you know, we're never the one at the end of the day that is making a finalized decision, but we're there to artistically help them in any way they can if they need more information about actors or if they need to see a different type of actor for a role. So I wouldn't say that I regret any of the final outcomes of the casts that are in projects with my name on it.

[8:09] Pat Goodwin: Uh, it's always a collaborative art.

[8:11] Mason Bray: What's your least favorite thing to see in an audition?

[8:15] Pat Goodwin: I, it irks me, one of my big pet peeves is somebody that feels like they have to repeatedly apologize for themselves.

[8:23] Pat Goodwin: Um, you never have to apologize for yourself. We understand we're human beings. We understand if you get sick, we understand if you unfortunately were not given ample time with the material. We understand that everybody has a bad day sometimes and they can't come in and give their best work. But people who repeatedly apologize um make me feel like they are putting too much pressure on themselves and in feeling like they're letting us down. We want you to succeed. And so the more that you can, and the what I would also say with that is if you're not having your best day, or if you're sick or if you're under the weather, or if you're going through something and just can't come in a room and do your best work, then don't come in.

And that's okay too if you have a good reason why you're not. But I think a lot of times people feel like apologizing is going to, you know, make things better in any way. And that that's not necessary in a lot of occasions. Just be communicative before your audition if there's something you feel like we should know.

[9:23] Mason Bray: Another question that just came to mind. When you um sign on to a show, do you cast all the casts after that, like the replacements and all that? Or is it only the original cast?

[9:32] Pat Goodwin: So when you're uh in a theater contract, you are nine times out of ten. I don't think there's ever been a time actually when I can't remember this. You're hired to cast the original production and then maintenance, which is all replacement casting that happens after that. Every once in a while there will be a casting director switch at some point during the run if they feel like they need to go with a different person for whatever reason, or if somebody, you know, is moving away. That happens. It's very, very rare in our industry. But the expectation is that you're not only going to cast the original company, but all the replacements that come after it.

[10:08] Mason Bray: So, what has been the biggest obstacle in your career?

[10:13] Pat Goodwin: Um, the biggest obstacle, that's another great question. I think the hardest thing, and this might sound like a sort of fake answer, but it's true. The hardest thing about being a casting director for me is that you can never see everybody that is right for a role. It's just impossible. There's so many performers and so many people. And I think what frustrates me in terms of an obstacle is that we're often in a very specific time crunch when we're trying to do certain jobs that we just don't have the leisure to spend a year looking for a certain role or travel to, you know, England and look for people in London if we need to, or travel to LA if time doesn't permit. So I think the time factor is a big thing, but also with specifically with theater, because you're working on a much stricter budget, the budget is sometimes not what you want it to be to cast the net a little bit wider and look in avenues where you normally wouldn't. And I think we're all getting very creative, especially in quarantine time with how we start to think about that and how we do reach out to more people and create more pipelines of actors that will have opportunity to be considered if it wasn't an opportunity before. But that would be what I would think is the most immediate things to come to mind in terms of you know an obstacle.

[11:29] Mason Bray: What's the best advice you have gotten?

[11:33] Pat Goodwin: I think the best advice in terms of casting that I've ever received from the mentors that I've had and the people that I've worked with is not to rush. Yes, you and I, I mean that you know, I know you can look at the word rush and go, well, you just said, you know, you're on a time crunch and there's so many things you have to do. Yes, you have a job to do and you have a client that you have to uh make sure it's taken care of. But I think a lot of times what happens is people either take on too many things at once or they feel like they have to overload their plate because they don't want to miss out on ever any opportunities, that it then becomes a cycle of so much work that needs to be done so quickly to meet deadlines.

And I think one of the things that I've learned uh in the more recent years is you always have to make sure that your time management in terms of those jobs is making the creative team feel like they're still being taken care of and that they're still in a position where they can reach out to you at any time for any reason, which I always want my creative teams to do that. So not rushing in that sense has been a great piece of advice that I've been given.

[12:41] Mason Bray: Do you think your career has benefited more from education or experience?

[12:46] Pat Goodwin: Experience. I think casting is the kind of position where there isn't a lot of opportunity for education. There's not a lot of uh classes that you can take on how to be a casting director. I'm actually an adjunct professor at Pace University, and one of the things I love about their program is that they let me create this course in casting. I teach it every spring, and my hope with that is that it will eventually turn into a minor, so that there is a collegiate minor program that can teach people to do it. But so much of my learning about the casting process and how you navigate relationships and how you scout talent and all those things has been because I was in the room with somebody who did it really well.

And I think if you have that opportunity to shadow somebody or to um even just talk to them, you know, I have a mentor right now who is not somebody that ever worked at our office, was never an intern. It was just somebody that reached out to me saying, I'm really interested in this. I would love to know more about it. Can you help me? And I had the time during quarantine to do that, and I was more than willing to do it. But I do think in general, uh it's so helpful to be in a room and hear the conversations that happen both when the actors are in the room and when they leave the room to know how the casting process unfolds. It's, it takes a long time to learn, and I'm still learning it 15 years later. There's so many little things here and there that um that I'm learning about, but I find that very helpful to be in the process, being very hands-on.

[14:14] Mason Bray: So, how have you been spending your time during quarantine other than mentoring?

[14:19] Pat Goodwin: Lots of Zoom auditions, lots of Zoom meetings and generals, and uh and yeah, I feel like the entire entertainment industry has sort of been forced into this corner where we're all living virtually. And the only thing we can do is to try to not get complacent with that. I'm still trying to spend as much time as I can uh just meeting new people that I find clips of and I like from the showcases or having conversations with folks that I normally uh wouldn't have had the time to have the conversations with. And so in addition to the actual jobs that we're still fortunate enough to do over Zoom, I've been trying to fill the remainder of my time with meeting new talent uh in any way possible. And it's been, I have to say, as much as I don't love the system of Zoom and this world that we're living in, one very positive thing for me that's come out of it is that I've been fortunate enough to have enough time to meet new actors more so than I ever would have in any other capacity.

[15:19] Mason Bray: Is there anything else you would like to add before we wrap up?

[15:23] Pat Goodwin: I think um for anybody that's listening that is an aspiring actor or an aspiring casting director, I think we're gonna get back to where we were in terms of having people in theaters and new art being created and to stay positive and to use the time until that moment comes to not let your art go to the wayside. There's a way to still be an artist uh and to still have your stuff online on social media, on websites, on virtual concerts. And I would just encourage people to uh to stick it out and to really, if it's something you love and it's something that you want to give a shot at as a career, you owe it to yourself to make sure that you give it that opportunity and that chance. And if uh we are back sooner rather than later, I'm more than willing to help out if I can.

[16:12] Mason Bray: Well thank you so much for being here.

[16:14] Pat Goodwin: Thank you.

[16:15] Mason Bray: My pleasure.