Lochley=Tracy Scoggins!

 Posted on 9/4/1997 by J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com> to CIS


{original post unavailable}

You're mixing up your terms. You don't use "better" in the way
that you are using them here. You look for the actor who most embodies
the character you're looking for. When we were casting Cartagia, for
instance, there were several actors who you could look at and say,
"Okay, this actor has more technique than *that* actor." But that
ain't the issue. Wortham Krimmer is mainly noted for being an actor on
daytime soap operas, and he was competing against people trained at the
Royal Shakespeare Academy in some cases. The latter may have been more
classically trained...but Wortham WAS Cartagia.

And we knew it in the first five minutes. The hard part was
then sitting through all the other auditions knowing that we had
already decided instantly on Wortham.

The casting director's job is to winnow down the list to those
who are real prospects. So by the time they get to me, the selection
is already very solid. When Tracy walked in, we instantly felt, "Okay,
this is the character." One other person came in and was also the
character, with a somewhat different take. So we brought both of them
back and had them audition one after the other, so we could compare and
see which worked best for the character. It was Tracy, hands down.

The casting process was no different for this character as any
other. We knew within moments.

jms