Alexa Fogel has been nominated for 15 Emmys and won three, and it won’t be a surprise if she’s nominated again this year for her work in the Netflix limited series Black Rabbit.
Starring Jason Bateman and Jude Law, the show follows a restaurateur who sees everything he’s built threatened when he lets his troubled brother back into his life. Bateman plays against type as the bad seed brother, while Law shines as a man fighting his own demons.
Fogel spoke to us from her home in Maine.
Key Insights
- Alexa Fogel prioritized authenticity and emotional specificity over nationality, casting actors based on the essence they brought to each role.
- Black Rabbit blends emerging talent with seasoned character actors to create a grounded, layered world across the show’s many intersecting social circles.
- The casting process emphasized collaboration, chemistry, and tone in roles involving sign language and highly specific character dynamics.
Were Jason and Jude on board before you came to cast it? I know they’re both EPs on it.
As I understand it, Jude brought it to Jason’s company. I think they figured out internally who’s gonna play which brother. It flipped on the heads of people’s expectations in the best way.
I noticed that there is a distinctly foreign aspect to the cast. There’s a lot of Australian and British people in it.
The world is my oyster. (Laughs)
I’m fascinated by the international scope of casting now. Do you go into it with the idea of, let’s just open it up to the world?
I went into Oz and The Wire with that idea. Idris Elba and Eamonn Walker and Dominic West. For a long time, I’ve just tried to look at the essence of characters through the essence of what actors can bring to it, whether they’re mostly theater actors or whatever. It was harder to do then, because crossing oceans, tapes having to go in the mail, but it’s a little bit easier now.
Let’s start with Sope and Amaka, both of whom really pop off the screen.
I think because Jason and I talked about certain things, Sope’s character, because he was an international star, could be almost anything, and he’s an actor I’ve loved for ages. Slow Horses, Gangs of London and the Nigerian film, His House.
Interestingly, Amaka had never auditioned for me before. I knew her work, but she was always working. And I think again, [for] a chef, you’re looking for certain qualities, She can come from anywhere to be successful. Once we had both of them, we also talked about the fact that they couldn’t both be British.
So we had to decide which one of them was going to be the American character, and I felt like the the rock star of it all lent itself to the British of it all. Also, Amaka’s American accent was really good. (Laughs)
Do you find that international actors bring something extra to a role?
It depends entirely on the role. In the case of Sope, his presence is so singular, that’s what that character needed. And Amaka’s real female strength, being someone who’s running a kitchen, it’s like casting someone in the military.
It’s hard to find. I’m not targeting somebody who’s foreign. I didn’t just see people from [far] away. I just know the qualities that I need to find.
One of the things that’s really interesting about the cast is the mix of new faces and more established ones.
We had Don Harvey on The Deuce. The great thing about working with Jason is he loves actors and he appreciates careers, and so if you show him somebody like Don and you correlate between the work and my enthusiasm, he gets it.
I also think when you’re working on gritty piece like this, and you’re looking for a level of heightened authenticity, you need people who can really do that. Don is a master. For Forrest Weber, that role as well as the role of Lou, there was a sign language component to that audition process, so that separated people out very quickly, because we also sent auditions to Troy and his consultant to make sure that things were authentic.
Did you know Forrest before?
I didn’t, and he’s wonderful. It’s just my good luck. I mean, it’s never lightning in a bottle. It’s a process. Like anything that is specialized, you’re going in a direction that’s very specific, so you see a lot of people, and you need one part of it to work, and then you also need another part of it to work, which is acting, and all these things have to alchemize.
It’s not really about, “I can’t believe I didn’t know him before.” It’s that all of these things in this moment in time met. I say this all the time, but you only need one.
Forrest had less actual experience than a lot of other people coming in, but he had all of those qualities. He was teamed up with Chris Coy, who I’ve cast many times. He’s so seasoned and he’s so generous, and they were really partners in this.
That was an amazing professional marriage, and I think Chris’ part got a little bit bigger, as I understand it, but for Forrest, I’m sure it was a great ongoing lesson of how to work on set, how to do everything.
One of the things that works well on the show are the smaller parts. One specific example is the Wall Street Guy in episode 2, whose behavior at the blackjack table costs Vince $150,000.
I did this with Kathryn Zamora-Benson, and we take that really seriously in terms of maintaining tone, [and] everything we do. Some of it’s instinctual. You know that when it’s right, it’s right. You see people, and I try to never show people to my collaborators, that I wouldn’t be happy with them being cast. Y
ou want it to be a range, but it can work in one way or another within the tone of the show. I think that’s what you’re doing with the one to five lines in the scene, and really understanding what the scene is trying to say.
So much of acting seems to be about persistence. Have there been actors who auditioned for you multiple times before finally landing the right role?
A long time ago, I used to be a little embarrassed about bringing actors in for for tiny things, small roles. I feel like we’re always respectful, we’re always happy to have them there.
The reality is, people want to work on good stuff, especially in New York. I don’t feel that way anymore. Because we’re all there to do a job.
There’s so many different worlds in this story, some of which never really overlap.
That was really fun about it for me. I was casting the kitchen, and then I was casting the front of house, and then I was casting upstairs, and they do interact, but they’re slightly different worlds. Then there’s the creepy people, and Anna [played by Abbey Lee] and the people that interact with her.
It’s a big cast, but you have to understand the function of character and tone. All of the ways the characters fit in with each other is critical. But each component of the restaurant world, and then obviously what happens in the criminal aspect, is really fun.
