ern Champion and Mark Paladini formed their partnership about 10 years ago after working on the film Pet Semetary. Some of their film credits include The Mask, Eraser, Mortal Combat, The Naked Gun, Police Academy I, II, II, IV, V and Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie. Some of their television credits include Babylon 5, Highlander, Legend, Beverly Hills 90210, Full House and War and Remembrance. Champion/Paladini Casting is based in Los Angeles and is currently running hard as they focus on the Spelling Entertainment one-hour prime-time drama Titans.
Scene4’s Lia Beachy caught up with them on the straightaway and talked to them before they raced off.

LB: How long have you been working with Spelling Entertainment?

FC: We’ve been here for about four years, not exclusively, which has been, I guess, both good and bad because people don’t think we’re available for other projects but in way we’re very happy here. I mean we’ve really found a niche with one of the most wonderful men, you know, legendary and to actually see this man in action, I don’t care what anybody says, you know, “Oh this a Spelling movie, oh it’s this or it’s that…” It doesn’t matter and to watch him wheel and deal…I’ll take it. But we miss our movies. It’s an odd thing and it’s not unlike being an actor. You do get put into certain categories. You do film too long they’ll never look at you for television. They feel you can’t do the pace. TV’s at a much faster pace. You lose this person (snapping her fingers) you’ve got to come up with someone else. You’ve got to be there constantly whereas with film, you have weeks to cast. You’re also not appeasing the immediate world… producers, directors, networks and production companies; [they all] have to do with television. So they both have their good and bad parts.

LB: So you’re doing mostly television?

FC: Right now, yes. We miss film. You miss that one-on-one decision with your director sometimes,  as opposed to running it up the flagpole and calling the network.

LB: You do have to go through a lot more people.

MP: Especially with series regulars. With series regulars it becomes brain surgery. There’s a lot of money at stake and once it goes into episodic we have basically our executive producers who do the bulk of it and of course Aaron Spelling gets the final say on all of our guest stars.

LB: Obviously you’re a filter for the director and the network in terms of bringing people in, but it seems you’re also a primary contributor in the decision of who gets cast in the show.

FC: First of all we’re bringing the actors in so right then and there we contribute… if you don’t contribute well you lose that privilege and you look for another job.

LB: For both of you, I’m curious, why or how did you go into this direction, casting versus being a director or going into some other aspect of the industry?

FC: The truth is we really should be producers, we’re good at this. We love casting. We adore our actors. They look like human beings, we know they’re not but we have wonderful times with them.  And not that we feel bad for them, they’re such an odd breed and for some strange reason I can get along very well with them… I’m a people person. You can’t tell me that one day is the same.  I am constantly being entertained. Good entertainment, bad entertainment. No day is the same. I love putting together things, I would hate to be a network person, you know, and just sit where windows don’t open and you have to work on just those shows.  Stupidly, I like feast or famine.

LB: That keeps it interesting for you.

FC: Scary, but interesting, you know we have such an eclectic resume that I don’t know if we would have had that if we chose to work in a certain studio or a network. We’re not crazy for these strikes so right now we’re very happy to be working. It’s scary all over. I mean, commercial agencies are closing down. And now the writers and then the actors. So you’re a little spooked. You really are. feast or famine. This famine is not one I’m looking forward to because everybody’s gotten very ugly. We also teach classes once or twice a week.

LB: In these classes you’re teaching actors how to…

FC: Cold read. I won’t teach them. I’m not a teacher. I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong when you come into my office. But honestly, comedy is harder.

LB: Why’s that?

FC: You can’t teach it.  You cannot teach comedy.  They’ve either got it or they don’t.  You can hit a line, but to be innately on, and to bring those lines to life, it’s very difficult to teach.

LB:  It’s natural

FC: I think so, don’t you?

MP: It is and in addition to that you also have different characters with a different sense of humor. Not only does the actor have to be a good actor and have humor but also it has to be the right sense of humor as the writer wrote it for the character. It’s always a melding of the actor with the role and there are actors who have humor but they don’t have the same type.  One is witty, one is a more physical comedian, one is New York rhythms… you hear it in different characters… a lot of it comes from the personality, the rhythm, the acting chops. Humor is much more difficult. 

LB: Take me through a typical day for you.

MP: We come in and have readings scheduled.  We get phone calls from agents and take a look at the people they are submitting.  Then we talk about the roles and some of the actors we already know that we can bring in for the producers and for us and these are actors that we hired before, that we’ve auditioned before. We keep copious notes on all the…

FC: But I never can read mine (laughing).

MP: We have all these notebooks on the wall and these are all the projects that we’ve worked on and we keep all of our notes and we remember the characters and when a character is similar to this then we’ll go to that and say lets look at the people we saw before. There are also people we meet, we teach classes, our producer will call us and say there is an actor that I want you to bring in.  Basically we have all these different resources that we use, then after we sort all that out and decide whom we bring in we probably already have a whole day of auditions scheduled. In the morning, we will be reading actors and sometimes if we are in a hurry we’ll say you have got a call back right now. Sometimes we’ll want to wait till we have a break just to see everyone so we have a perspective on all the different people that we have. Then we’ll decide on call backs. There are things we have to take in to consideration like the hair color of the other actors in the scene especially when you are dealing with season regulars, the ethnicity of the other actors in the scenes because you want to have a mix…

FC: You have a very big ensemble. (pointing to a group of headshots on the wall) That is Titans. That’s the new Spelling show. Looking at them, those are 12 – 13 regulars so anybody else coming on the show better not look like any of them. So you’re dealing with heights and weights and hair colors.  I’m always aware of not having people in a scene that could be remotely mistaken for each other.

LB: You are casting a TV series for as long as the show is on the air. Are you with a film project from beginning to end?

FC: Well, [with film] you make a contract for a eight or twelve week deal before the movie starts and when you’re done, you’re done. There will be some screw-ups and we’ll get called along the way, but with TV shows, one week you’re done and then you’re reading the next script. It’s all the time and there are many casting people who can’t do it. It’s quick… and you always have to have a back up. On the downside, you don’t get to see as many people.

MP: It also depends on how soon you are getting the script. With Titans we’re getting the scripts ahead of time. When we were working on Beverly Hills 90210, near Christmas time and near the very end of production, we would be getting our scripts two days or one day before our casting session. So we’d be sitting around waiting for the script for five days and then, boom we’ve got to do it quick. Every show has it’s own personality.

FC: Talking about a quasi-typical day, there’s a day when a breakdown will go to an agent. The agent will send submissions and Mark and I go through the submissions. We’re always interested in something new. We like to use all ethnicities, it works, that’s real, that’s life… and [when] you’re looking at a very white show, you can’t let that happen and Mr. Spelling would be the first one to agree. You really have to make it very honest.

MP: Especially when you have a character that’s not in the family…in the family everyone has to be the same ethnicity, but once we have a character that’s not in that family we have a little more leeway about what we can do. We were fortunate in that we did a show called Babylon 5, the science-fiction series set in the future, and Joe Straczynski the creator, his vision of the future was that all jobs were open to both sexes, all ethnicities, so whenever you had a general in the military, it could be a woman. Any character could be anything.

FC: Which was really great because you had freedom. Total freedom. Male, white, green, yellow, orange…

LB: You cast the best person for the job.

FC: That’s right.

MP: Exactly.

LB: Which leads me to this -- what if someone comes to audition for a particular role and they’re phenomenal and you absolutely want to cast that person, but they don’t quite fit the look, do you go out of your way to change the producer’s mind? Do you try to dye their hair?

FC: You can try, you can try.

MP: You can try all those things.

FC: You do whatever you can, or you switch the role. You do whatever you can not to let this gold go away. [Unless] you’re stupid enough to pass over talent… we’re not.

MP: Every now and then we have someone we feel strongly about and we’ll try to lobby for that person. But the fact is that our job really is to give [the producers] five different choices for the role that would be terrific and each one would be terrific in their own way. I love to tell this story. Fern and I, we had been reading this role for the New WKRP in Cincinnati forever. It was going on forever. And I remember I was sick as a dog, the worst cold and it was my worst day ever at work. Fern was saying, “If I have to hear this material one more time I’m going to jump off a cliff…” and then French Stewart came in and we both saw him and he didn’t look like the character at all the way the role had been described to us, and we just started reading him and he brought something to the table that just brought the material to life. Fern and I looked at each other as if to say, “did you just hear what I heard” and we knew we had to call him back. Even though he wasn’t exactly what they were looking for.

FC: Magic doesn’t happen a lot… but it happens. A person can walk into the room and you are mesmerized. Because there’s a walk and a carry and a confidence.

LB: A charisma about that person.

FC: Yes. And then if they can speak, it even becomes that much more phenomenal. There’s the magic of the face and then there’s the magic when they speak. Magic in the face is very common in Hollywood, but magic in the face and speaking is a little harder, you have to dig a little deeper.

LB: Then you do have actors you’ve worked with, that you’ve cast and you know they’re reliable and professional that you keep in your back pocket for something else even if you can’t cast them at the time.

FC: Absolutely.

LB: So for an actor you’re that first creative wall that they’re coming up against.

FC: True. But there are agents that see them first and we have learned to trust some and not trust others. If an agent strikes out too many times with their submissions, we don’t call him in again. But when an actor comes into the room, we are on their side, we want them to get the job.

MP: I want to expand on that because you used the term “wall” and that’s only the way it can be perceived. What we actually do, and we’ve done this for a long time, the agents have a good feeling for us about this, which is a lot of times we’ll read the actors, who we know already but we’re not sure they’re right for a role. And if we like an actor, especially if we’ve hired someone already, but if we like someone, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to call him or her back. Because what happens in this system is that you really want to call them back for the role they really have the potential of booking. And if they don’t have the potential of booking, you burn them by bringing them into the producers and showing them not at their best. I’m not saying we can’t make a mistake, but generally speaking, ninety-nine percent of the time when we don’t call someone back, we are his or her best friends for doing that.

Interview Continues...

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