Casting directors Erica Berger and Cathy Sandrich Gelfond won an Emmy for their work on the first season of HBO Max’s medical drama The Pitt, and a year later they have been nominated again for their work on season 2, this time with associate Seth Caskey.
It’s just one of 25 nominations for the show, 13 of which were in acting categories, one shy of the record set in 2022 and 2023 by another HBO series, Succession.
With the series in the midst of shooting its third season, the pair took a few minutes to talk about putting the show together, and the complexities that go along with it.
Key Insights
- ‘The Pitt’ prioritizes talent over name recognition, giving lesser-known actors a chance to break through in major roles.
- Casting directors Erica Berger and Cathy Sandrich Gelfond watch countless tapes and often audition actors repeatedly until they find the right role.
- Authenticity is the biggest factor in a successful audition, with truthful, believable performances standing out more than credits or résumé length.
It must be enormously gratifying when the show gets so many acting nominations.
Erica Berger: That was the most exciting thing of all time. We’re so proud of them. We’re so happy for them! That was the best.
Cathy Sandrich Gelfond: For both of us, the big thing is that a lot of these people weren’t known until the show. That’s the biggest thrill. People like Patrick Ball, who had done a ton of theater and [one episode of] Law & Order, and Shabana Azeez, who lived in Australia and had done one movie that had gone to South by Southwest.
Isa Briones is another one who I had never heard of before.
CSG: She’d done a lot of theater, too. She was like so many others, where it’s not that they hadn’t done a couple of things, but they hadn’t gotten the right thing, and so us helping them find their place so they could shine, that’s a big deal.
After the success of the first season, is there more pressure to meet the level you achieved? Or less pressure because you’re a known commodity and it’s easier to cast people? Or both?
CSG: Both. We were all afraid of the sophomore slump. The first season was all about educating agents about what we were doing and how we were doing this. The hard thing was to keep the quality up, but the easier thing is then everybody wanted to be on.
EB: There was an understanding of how everything works, and when we came back for season 2, it didn’t have to be re-explained, so that bit was nice.
What is the process of finding all these new faces? People like Taylor Dearden, Fiona Dourif, Supriya Ganesh, Gerran Howell and the list goes on.
CSG: We were incredibly blessed because everyone from top to bottom said we don’t need names, because we have Noah Wyle. That was studio, network, everybody and they just said, “Go find the best actors.” We knew that we were going to cast it like a play, in that the ensemble is on the stage the entire time, so we could look everywhere. That said, they really wanted us to look in LA, and then we didn’t find it in LA. So you branch out and you figure it out.
EB: We just went for it. We put the breakdowns out, and just started requesting tons of tapes. And I love to say this whenever we’re in interviews: “Yes, we watch all the tapes!” (Laughs) Building the puzzle happened organically as we went along. We just hold on to the photos of people that everybody responded to, and then we have the photos displayed so we can all look and see who might fit with who. We jumped right in and said, “Let’s start reading everyone we can.”
The volume must have been insane.
CSG: It is an incredibly heavy lift in terms of the volume of how many actors we saw, yes. You just blitz. I can’t explain it. You just do it. You just work really hard.
EB: We get so many submissions, and it depends role by role how many we’ll request and how many we’ll see. For the bigger parts at the start of every season, it’s obviously much more than when we’re episode to episode and we don’t have as much time. Then it’s going to be less. But even the first two roles we put out on the breakdown for this season, we got over 10,000 submissions for just those two, and then we ended up seeing maybe 60 to 70 each.
CSG: You can’t rely on all those people that everybody knows, and that’s sort of the casting director’s dream. It’s just harder because you’ve got to find new people every time, and everyone kept saying, “Where did you find these people?” We met them in the process. We found them as we went. A lot of these people I didn’t even know, and that’s really exciting. But the secret sauce of our show is that you don’t know the people, so you can fully invest.
I know that casting directors love seeing some actors over and over again until they can find the right role for them. Are there any of those here?
CSG: There’s a lot of them. Rusty Schwimmer for me. I saw her probably 25 years ago in a movie, and I’ve wanted to cast her since then. Finally, we found the place [for her]. It’s been very fun because I’ve done this a long time, and I finally get to hire some of these great character actors that I’ve known for years. Erica, tell him about Fiona.
EB: Fiona Dourif. I’ve loved her forever. People ask me, “Oh, what specific thing did you love her in?” But it wasn’t about that. It was just about seeing her over the years, auditioning her for things, and I just fell in love with her and her talent. I’ve wanted to hire her for my whole career, and then it finally happened. We have a lot of that on this show.
Do you have people you keep bringing back for this, too?
EB: Absolutely. We meet them on this show and they’re so right for it, and if it’s not one thing, we’ll keep trying until we get them in the right part. Sometimes, we’ll read them five or six times. I’d say it happens in both those ways: new people that we meet, and then people that we’ve loved from before.
What about people who are totally new, looking for that break? Do you see people who don’t have representation?
EB: No, because the breakdowns only go out to agencies, though Cathy and I have been known to grow a fondness for waiters that we meet (both laugh), so that does happen. I am actually a very bad patient in real life, so the nurses that I encounter who help me at various appointments, sometimes we’ll end up auditioning them, but it is largely through agents. As far as credits, I don’t think either of us care if you have a single credit on your resume. If you feel right for the part, I’m gonna want to see that tape.
CSG: I had a joke yesterday with an agent from a very, very good boutique agency, and she was saying, “I just met this kid out of the blue in an acting class, he’s had four auditions and he’s tested for two things, and one of them he didn’t get because he had no credits.” And I said, “Send him [our] way. He sounds great.”
EB: And Cathy finds them at the college showcases as well.
CSG: I do go to the colleges, and the other thing that we do is, because some of the patients have such specific needs, we cast a very wide net in an unusual community. Veterans, people with various disabilities, like that.
There was the deaf actress, Jessica “Limer” Flores, in season 2.
CSG: Correct. So we’re constantly looking, and that’s a different pool of people, but it’s also because we’re looking for something very specific, and we believe in authentic casting, so we want to make sure that we’re casting the truth.
What about for the less specific roles? Is there something someone can do, or have done, to get noticed and have a shot to get on the show?
EB: As far as what they can do in the read that catches our attention, it just has to be authentic. I don’t think it would serve anybody to say, “Oh, you have to try this or you have to try that.” What gets our attention is, I believe this person is having this back pain. Or, I believe that this person has been through this trauma, or whatever the scene requires. That’s the number-one thing that’s going to get our attention: the authenticity and the truth of the scene.
CSG: So many of our series regulars had this story that we didn’t know, but that made their auditions deeper. Patrick Ball’s parents are health professionals. Taylor is neurodivergent. I mean, we can go on and on. So you don’t always know what you’re seeing, but that you see it, and we never miss it.
What are the challenges for season 3? Do you look for bigger names who are now easier to get?
CSG: We have gotten more big names, and we have a list of those. But technically, what we’re looking for is if you do this right in general. I always believe you have people you love, but you’re creating a world, so every episode you’re looking for something different. And who is that? You’re meeting more and more people. But as Erica said, we’ve hired a lot of people that have read five, six times for this show, and it’s just because we love them, and finally we find the right place [for them], and that’s really fun.
EB: I feel like pressure-wise, it feels the same as all the other seasons. Cathy and I always want to do our best work. We want to make our team happy and proud, no matter what is happening outside of the show. So we put that pressure on ourselves, no matter what is happening with any project that we work on. Our team will always find ways to challenge us as far as our creativity [goes], and what kinds of new and unique people that we’re going to have to try and find, and we’ve tried to find it for them. I think that’s always going to be the fun and the challenge of the show. I think it’s just going to continue as we go on, hopefully, as we go on for many seasons, knock on wood.
Do you keep track of how many acting Emmy nods you get, and say, “Okay, next year, we shoot for 14!”?
EB: (both laugh) No, I don’t.
CSG: No, but what I will tell you is, we’re so happy for all these people. It’s just overwhelmingly wonderful that all these people got recognized this year, and that’s joyous.
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