Stephen Lambert, CEO of storied UK producer Studio Lambert, has delved deep into the differences in casting between the UK and U.S. versions of The Traitors.
12.08.2023 - 17:51 / deadline.com
The Traitors has been one of the breakout unscripted hits of the year. But while many viewers of the Peacock series will have been aware of its cast of celebrity reality faces including The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Brandi Glanville, Survivor’s Cirie Fields and Below Deck’s Kate Chastain, the team behind the series also needed a group of willing civilian contestants.
Enter the casting directors — Erin Tomasello, Jazzy Collins, Moira Paris and Holly Osifat — who were tasked with finding folk from all walks of life.
“We wanted to find people that are good at lying, people that are good at manipulation and maybe some people that are really gullible that will fall for it,” Tomasello said during a panel featuring all four casting directors at Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees awards-season event. “Our first brainstorm was what job titles do people hold that maybe emulate that. Is it a retired judge or lawyer or a preschool teacher. That was the starting point for us.”
The civilian cast included emergency-room nurse Amanda Clark; Andie Vanacore, who works in music streaming; retired Army veteran Christian De La Torre; actress Geraldine Moreno; DMV office manager Michael Davidson; and political analyst Quentin Jiles.
Where did they find these people?
Collins said diversity was a big driver for her, so she scoured the country looking for new faces. “Let me look for a mathematician that is a Black woman, When people think of a mathematician, they’re going to think of someone that’s incredibly smart and very logical, but they might actually be incredibly gullible. So, you want to have that mishmash of types of people like Quentin, who’s one of those people that are very much like a politician. He’s a
Stephen Lambert, CEO of storied UK producer Studio Lambert, has delved deep into the differences in casting between the UK and U.S. versions of The Traitors.
Since its return to TV screens in 2015, fans have tuned in to Love Island UK to watch as singles compete with each other to find love.
The cast of Gossip Girl has raked in a lot of money over the years!
is the newest hero in the DC cinematic universe, and he's got his work cut out for him!Director Ángel Manuel Soto recently sat down with ET's Ash Crossan to talk about making the first major superhero movie with a Latino lead — and the uphill battle that has been releasing it amid the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. «The strike was not in my bingo card,» Soto admitted.
Matthew McConaughey and his son Levi are helping those impacted by the deadly wildfires in Maui.
Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses several major plot developments in the feature film “Red, White & Royal Blue,” currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, as well as the novel it’s based on. Over this past weekend, certain corners of the internet were hyperventilating with excitement over the release of “Red, White & Royal Blue,” the romantic comedy about how Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), the First Son of the United States, and Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine), third in line to the British throne, transform from enemies to friends to lovers.
Deadline held its annual Contenders Television: The Nominees awards-season event over the weekend, this year spotlighting 13 scripted, unscripted and nonfiction titles from nine networks, studios and streamers. The conversations with the creatives behind the projects allowed for deep dives into their work in virtual panel discussions.
Emmy-winning producer and director Mark Mylod has been with Succession for all four seasons, as has composer Nicholas Britell, who won an Emmy for the iconic theme of the series marking the three-time Oscar nominee’s first TV show. However, it was the stunner of a Episode 3 in the series’ final season, “Connor’s Wedding,” that was unlike anything they had tackled before on the show, and it presented unique challenges.
Based on George RR Martin’s Fire & Blood, the HBO and Max series House of the Dragon had a daunting task in being compared to the network’s biggest-ever series Game of Thrones. Set 200 years earlier in House Targaryen, House of the Dragon’s first season was a huge success reflected in the ratings and the nine Primetime Emmys for which the show got nominated.
In the National Geographic documentary The Territory, illegal land grabbers in a section of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest burn down thousands of acres to clear space for cattle farming, buzzsaw giant trees left and right and build settlements in violation of Brazilian law. The destruction of their forest home has been devastating for the Indigenous Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people, who are supposed to be protected from such incursions upon their territory.
It wasn’t a quest to find new delicacies or the chance to go on road trips that inspired Padma Lakshmi to launch Taste the Nation on Hulu. Rather, it was the 2016 election and all the talk about border politics that prompted the executive producer and former co-star of Top Chef to want to launch a show that focused on the intersection of great food and our nation’s diverse population.
Tupac Shakur has been gone for nearly three decades, but his popularity has never waned thanks to family, friends and collaborators like Jamal Joseph and Allen Hughes, who are behind FX’s Emmy-nominated docuseries Dear Mama.
It’s been over 16 years since The Hills first premiered!
“Making a show about sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll at the height of Covid was another challenge that we did not anticipate,” Daisy Jones & The Six executive producer Lauren Levy Neustadter said of the very real-world hurdles the Prime Video series about a fictional 1970s supergroup faced making it from the page to the screen.
Christopher Gattelli appeared at Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees awards-season event after receiving his second consecutive nomination for his work creating the numerous dances in Schmigadoon!, which takes a satirical look at the world of movie and Broadway musicals.
In Apple TV+’s Black Bird, Dennis Lehane’s limited series about convicted criminal Jimmy Keane (Taron Egerton) trying to elicit a confession from suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), cinematographer Natalie Kingston knew she wanted to tackle toxic masculinity from a fresh angle.
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie heads into final Emmy Awards voting with more nominations than any other nonfiction project this year: seven in all, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, as well as recognition for director Davis Guggenheim and picture editor Michael Harte.
Tom Rowe has been the main musical man behind Ted Lasso for all three seasons, including that memorable and catchy theme song, but it was an assignment to write a song that could really get to the heart of what the series and its title character is all about that has led to an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Music and Lyrics for Rowe and his key collaborator, singer and musician Sam Ryder.
Celebrating television might feel like a wasted effort right now, especially since 11,500 writers and 160,000 actors are walking the picket lines for the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. But it would be unfair to overlook the extraordinary work of so many Emmy-worthy creatives, even if the ongoing dispute between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers prevents writers and actors from talking about the very series that got them a ticket to the 75th annual Primetime Emmy Awards in the first place. Sadly, everyone will have to wait until January 2024 to see who will accept their just rewards. But this year’s Contenders Television: The Nominees virtual livestream event that kicks off Saturday at 10 a.m. PT will certainly make it worth the wait.
Princess Catherine just got a promotion.