Regina Taylor, The Unit: Casting into the Acting Pool
In the hands of a guest actor other than Michael McKean, the role of the DoD official "wouldn't have been as powerful," says The Unit's casting director.
The Unit is in reruns for the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, we continue shooting new episodes for the coming year.
Sharon of Sharon Bialy/Sherry Thomas casting has been moving in warp drive trying to cast David Mamet's up-coming script that requires 21 guest actors before the first day of shooting. She's used to the challenges of casting for The Unit. Like finding an actor who can speak Pashto, an Afghanistan language, and who can also ride a horse. This was needed in "Shadow Riders," which followed the Unit's quest to deliver a bride to a groom in order to barter a truce between warring Afghanistan tribes.
In each episode, Sharon's hawk-eyes and ears are focused on the credibility and authenticity of each actor filling each role. Producers who work with her appreciate that a good portion of the battle in creating a great production is getting the cast right. And any one who knows la petite Sharon Bialy knows that she is a force of nature who always finds a way to find her man or woman or child.
As a casting director, she has worked on film and TV projects for over 20 years - from Extremities, starring Farrah Fawcett, to Pickett Fences to Jericho, Drugstore Cowboy to Mr. Holland's Opus - as well as casting for theatres across the country, including Broadway's Jersey Boys and A Walk in the Woods.
"I love the theater and it helped to shape my esthetic for other mediums," Sharon shares. As a child growing up in New York, " I second- acted" every play. My brother and I would sneak in after intermission into the second act."
In college, Sharon was a pre-med student who also studied dance "until I broke a couple of fingers," she recalls. " I then auditioned for the Guthrie Theater as an actress and got in." Sharon got her love for actors there. " I wanted to be around actors but I wasn't good enough to act," she states matter-of-factly
Moving to California, she became a casting director for industrial commercials by simply stating she was a casting director to her prospective employer. The experience would follow.
For the movie Blue Velvet, Sharon was a casting assistant's secretary at the front desk answering the phones. One day, the La Jolla Playhouse, whose artistic director was Des McAnuff, called needing help casting for The Cherry Orchard. Her boss was on vacation, so Sharon filled in. Thus started her long-time relationship with casting director Rick Pigano and Des, who would later direct the Broadway shows A Walk in the Woods and Jersey Boys. " I love collaborating with Des, who appreciates the contribution of a casting director."
Part of Sharon's job is to glean through all the possible actors for each role by auditioning them to see which she would pass through to the director. I first met Sharon in 1987. She and Rick Pigano cast me in my first West Coast gig at The La Jolla Playhouse. I played Ariel in a radical deconstruction of Shakespeare's The Tempest, staged by the chain-smoking, motorcycle riding theater auteur Robert Woodruff. It was one of the best acting experiences I've had. Robert taught me about taking chances.
Says Sharon, "Robert taught me that the world wasn't all white. In a casting session he asked me, 'Where are the people of color? The theater world should be made up of what the world is made up of.' This was five years before non-traditional casting was coined."
When it came to the initial casting thoughts for the role of The Unit's Jonas Blane, Sharon without hesitation suggested that the role - not written as an African-American - be open to a "non-traditional" interpretation. "Shawn and David said,'Great idea' and that's a rarity in the TV world."
Sharon says, "The Unit has been my favorite TV job. I've had the opportunity to meet so many military people and people from all over the world. Great for a middle-class, Caucasian, Jewish girl from Brooklyn."
Sharon's casting partner of seven years, Sherry Thomas, is the biggest fan of Shawn Ryan's The Shield. Sharon says, "I had cast Mamet's plays but not met him. It was a dream come true to work with him."
Sharon has always. strived for excellence in all her endeavors. Whether that's in casting Mr. Holland's Opus and wanting to "honor the committiment" by hiring actual deaf actors in the roles of deaf actors - even if that meant her learning to sign because there was not a budget for interpreters for the auditions. She also wanted to make sure that the musicians really knew how to play instruments.
Sharon says that shooting The Unit is like shooting an eight-day movie. "The thing I'm proud of is the level of excellence that's sustained on the show. Editing to writing... every department is on a level of excellence sustained over four years. It starts at the top with Shawn and David. There is a level of trust with them. They treat you as artists. You are valued. You want to pay them back by doing a great job. If you bring up an actor they've never heard of before and you vouch for them, they will listen." When they needed someone with authenticity and weight to play the African dictator in the "Force Majeure" episode, Sharon tugged on the vast fishing net of her photographic memory and pulled up Isaach De Bankole. De Bankole, little known in the States, is a French speaking Ivory Coast-born award-winning actor in France.
Sharon's keenness in finding the right person for the right part often comes back to her lesson's from repertory theater where you can see an actor in a wide variety of roles in the course of seasons, where you can " see his depth and range". This is what led Sharon to suggest Michael McKean for last week's episode, "Misled and Misguided." McKean beautifully played the official from the Department of Defense who believes tech intelligence trumps field logic.
McKean came into the national spotlight as Lenny in TV's Laverne and Shirley. His film roles include mockumentaries This Is Spinal Tap (which he co-wrote and composed songs for), Best in Show and A Mighty Wind (for which he and his wife, Annette O'Toole, garnered an Academy Award nomination for the song, "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow"). His movies include Coneheads and Christopher Guest's The Big Picture (co-writer) and Best in Show. He is also a stage craftsman who has appeared on Broadway in Rupert Holmes' Accomplice and most recently was in Tracie Lett's Superior Donuts, at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.
For Sharon, who's antennae is always tuned to emerging artists as well as tracking established careers, there was no question in casting McKean in a drama. " I knew what he was capable of doing it from his stage work," she says. The admirer/collector of fine actors definitively states, "In the hands of a different artist, the role wouldn't have been as powerful."
