Mike Page and Arlie Day might have only been working together officially as a team for five years, but they’ve been friends for much longer than that. Day, in fact, is sort of indirectly responsible for Page’s entry into the casting world, so it makes sense that they are partners now.
Over the course of nearly two decades, they have worked on dozens of movies and TV shows, both together and separately and have created a thriving business.
Page and Day are the perfect example of a modern team: they don’t live in the same city or time zone, but thanks to the wonders of technology, they don’t need to. They just wrapped casting on their latest project, Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex for Teddy Schwartzman’s Black Bear. The casting duo spoke to us from their respective homes, Day in Los Angeles, and Page in suburban Denver.
Insights: Lessons from Mike Page and Arlie Day
- Utilize virtual auditioning and maintain flexibility to work from anywhere.
- Keep auditions authentic; limit takes and avoid over-rehearsing to preserve natural performance.
- Hold your sides during auditions, own your space, and remember casting directors are on your side.
How did you both get into casting in the first place?
Arlie Day: I was working at KARE 11, the NBC news station in the Twin Cities and I was looking for a change. Some things led me to apply to the NBC page program here in LA and I got into casting that way.
They have these assignments. Say you wanted to get into publicity or casting or something. The assignments were two months long, and the whole idea was to get you into a job at NBC to keep you in the family. I realized right away I wanted to work in independent casting — more on the creative side of things, being able to audition actors and be in the room and boots on the ground casting — versus the executive side, which is more overseeing all the casting directors.
I applied for a job on an ABC pilot, Brothers & Sisters. I remember the interview, the casting director said, “One in a million get picked up, it probably won’t go, but you can come and work on the pilot and see how you like it.” We got lucky, it got picked up for five seasons. That’s actually how I met Mike.
What a perfect segue.
Mike Page: (Laughs) I moved to LA knowing that I wanted to work in film and TV, but not knowing anything. I ended up working as the assistant to the president of a reality TV company and realized I really wanted to work on scripted stuff, so I ended up getting a PA job on Brothers & Sisters. On my very first day for my very first task, they sent me over to the casting offices to pick up deal memos. There was this bubbly, beautiful, wonderful woman sitting behind the desk and she said, “Hi, my name’s Arlie. What’s yours?” She was my first introduction, along with her bosses, Jeanie Bacharach and Gillian O’Neill, that I got to see what casting was.
I interviewed for my first casting director, Dava Waite, and she hired me. I got to work on My Name Is Earl, Weeds and Community with her. That kind of launched me through it, but I maintained my friendship with Arlie. When she went out on her own, I got hired over at TNT/TBS as manager of casting, then later TruTV and the launch of HBO Max. When my partner there went on maternity leave, we brought Arlie in to fill in, and that was really our first chance to work together. It was Kismet.
What was it about casting that spoke to the two of you?
AD: It’s not just knowing actors and placing the puzzle pieces together. There’s a whole lot that goes into it, so just being in the trenches really was how I figured it out. But, stepping back, the creative part really excited me.
MP: I had never really had a frame of reference for casting, with the exception of Carrie Fisher’s performance in Soapdish.
I was never a professional actor, but I was a kid in high school, and we had a pretty good theater program. I was one of the only boys who would go out and I was the only male tenor in the school, so I always got the leads. But I always wanted to do more. I guess I can say I get bored easily, and what I love about casting is every project, every role, every day, is completely different. It’s reinventing the wheel every time, and that’s fun and interesting. It’s exciting to me.
Since you mentioned working together, I’ve talked to a bunch of teams, and everyone has a different dynamic. What’s yours?
AD: We just fell into a really nice rhythm right away. I think our partnership is so special, because there are certain things that I would rather not do, and it just so happens to be the things that Mike likes to do and vice versa. We really complement each other that way.
We are both very hands-on and we probably do more work than we need to. When we started getting very, very busy, we did start taking point on projects so things would go through one person.
What are some of the things that you don’t like that he does and vice versa?
AD: I don’t want to divulge.
Oh, come on!
AD: (Laughs) It’s not even something specific. It just will happen that things I’m not maybe in the mood for, he’s offering up right away. It works out great.
MP: We really do switch back and forth. If we’ve had a very audition-heavy project and I ran them, it’s kind of nice because on the next one, she’ll take over and I’ll go battle with agents or vice versa.
We share very common interests in the types of projects that have appealed to us. It’s so important to each of us to have a full partner, and that we’re really there in the trenches together. We also share the same philosophy that this isn’t life or death. This is supposed to be fun.
One of my favorite lines that Arlie always says is, “This is entertainment. It’s supposed to be entertaining.” When it does get super stressful, it’s great that we have each other to say, “Let’s take a couple of breaths.”
AD: It’s really helpful that we have very similar tastes, too, because, 100% of the time, if one of us reads a script and likes it or doesn’t, the other ends up feeling the exact same way. It’s really, really a nice working relationship in so many ways, but that’s a biggie.
Is it ever complicated that you don’t work in the same city?
AD: Not really, because everything has been virtual for so long that if he’s six miles away or 600 miles away, what does it matter? We started our partnership in January 2020, so we’ve been virtual our entire partnership.
MP: With our associate, Christina Blevins, in Maryland, in a way it makes us almost a 24-hour company. Whenever something’s going on, one of us is pretty much always available. I’ve seen Arlie physically more in person now that I’ve moved than when I was still in LA. Living in Denver, it’s such a short and relatively cheap, easy flight — and because my husband still works out of LA as well, we keep a crash pad there and maintain the presence.
We consider ourselves an LA-based company, but the fact is, in the five years we’ve had the company, we’ve had, what, three in-person sessions?
You bring something up that I find people talking about more and more. The benefits of technology mean you can live wherever you want and still do this, but it takes away the room and being in the same place as the actors. Do you miss it?
AD: I don’t think I realized how much I missed it until we recently had a project that we were doing in-person director sessions, and man did the passion come back out. It was just an “ah-ha” moment of, “Wow. This is what I missed. This is what it’s supposed to be.”
Do I want to audition every single pre-read until the end of time this way? No, but would I like to have a balance of self-tapes and auditions in person? Yes.
MP: After 20 years of doing this, we consider many of the actor’s friends. It’s great to be able to see them and share a space together in person.
Also, in the decades we’ve been doing this, the industry has changed so much, and it’s so much faster now. You don’t have the chance to set up and listen to months of sessions. The producers, writers, directors, execs, etc, don’t have the time or availability anymore to do days and days of auditions. It does help though, because with watching tapes, we’re watching in the medium that we’re casting for.
It’s a fascinating trade-off for me because everybody misses it, but at the same time, everybody understands that life is so much better because of the technological advantages.
AD: Well, the three of us all having babies at that time too, it was such a beautiful thing to be able to be home, not missing any milestones with our children. It was just such a nice, peaceful, beautiful way to raise a child in that first year.
MP: Creatively, I think there’s a huge benefit for it too, because during business hours, we’re getting hammered by agents and managers and there’s administrative work and so much else going on that I can watch tapes as soon as the kiddo gets to bed. It’s great.
My husband goes to bed and I can start that at nine and do three, four, whatever hours of uninterrupted creative time where I can give the auditions my 100% focus and I can be cozy and relaxed and really pay attention to the nuances, as opposed to when it’s in person and you feel like, “Oh my god, I gotta get through all of these and we’ve got a meeting at four, and a table read at six.”
There are definitely pros and cons, but at the end of the day, we are for hire. Whatever our employers want, be it studio, network, or independent producers, we’re going to deliver.
Since we’re talking about auditions, I’m curious if you find that there are common mistakes that actors make when they come in, or when they’re doing self-tapes.
MP: I think the biggest one I see is over-taping. We can tell that they’ve done 20-plus takes or whatever, and they’ve ironed out all of the humanity. When we’re teaching, I strongly recommend no more than three takes, unless you really screwed something up.
AD: Also, don’t over-rehearse, because if you book it and you go to set, you’re not going to be able to take direction. You need to be flexible and fluid and be able to change it.
I can’t tell you how many actors used to come in the room and ask how to pronounce a word in the script. I would tell them, and they’d still pronounce it the wrong way 99% of the time because they’ve rehearsed it that way over and over and over and can’t think of it any other way.
With those things in mind, what piece of advice or wisdom would you give to someone coming in to audition for you?
AD: Hold your sides. Hold your sides. Hold your sides. You don’t know what’s going to happen that could throw you off. You don’t know if your reader is going to skip a page. You want to be able to pick back up and have it be fluid and not have it completely derail your audition.
Also, don’t come in and apologize for existing, instead of just owning the space in the room and knowing, hey, we slotted this 15 minutes for you. This is your time, your space. I try to tell actors, “We want you to get the job.” If you get the job, it makes our lives easier. If you’re good, it makes us look good. So we are 100% team you.
MP: That all applies to self tapes too. We don’t ever put out audition requests to just anybody. Whether we’re reading five people or 500, it doesn’t matter, they are all hand-selected because we believe in them.
Arlie and I view actors as collaborators, and when we have you in our room, personally or via self tape, we’re looking at you to bring your professional personal and creative artistry and your take on the role. That’s what excites us.
Most importantly, and I know this is easier said than done, this is the chance to play and have fun. I always like to say, “If you can, before you start your audition, take a big, deep breath and find a little personal mantra that you can recite to yourself.” If you can’t come up with one, my favorite to offer is a big, deep breath in, “Fuck it” and let it rip because we’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking to answer basic questions. Can this person act? How well can they act? How big is their range? Can they take direction? And then, most importantly, are they this character? That’s all we care about.
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