In December 2017, casting director Cindy Tolan answered a phone call from West Side Story producer Kristie Macosko Krieger. “I had never met her. And she said, ‘Steven Spielberg. Tony Kushner. West Side Story. Are you interested?’ When somebody asks you that, the only way to respond is, ‘Yes.’”
It was Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Angels In America and screenwriter of Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, who suggested Tolan. “We’re friends, I’ve known Tony for many years,” she says. “My first internship was at an off-Broadway theatre called the New York Theatre Workshop. And on my very first day they were reading the second part of Angels In America, Perestroika, for the first time, out loud, and they asked me to read the stage directions.”
By January 2018, Tolan had signed on to cast West Side Story, a process that would last more than a year. “It was my first time working with Steven, which is an extraordinary thing,” she explains. “Steven likes to challenge himself, and at a certain point, it was said, ‘Cindy, if we can’t cast the film, I’m not making it.’ I turned to my entire office and said, ‘We are not going to be the reason this film doesn’t get made. That can be some other department.’ And what that meant was start looking for the four leads — Maria, Tony, Anita and Bernardo.”
Alongside the normal casting process, Tolan put out an open call via her social-media account that resulted in a deluge of audition tapes from around the world. “We also did eight open calls, two in Puerto Rico, LA, Florida, New York. We had five local casting directors, including in Puerto Rico, and did a search in Latin America and Argentina.” Tolan’s office received more than 30,000 filmed auditions and watched every one. “I had an amazing associate, Nick Petrovich, and two assistants [Ari Rudess and Shannon Corey], and the way we watched the auditions is the singing clip first, then the acting, because if someone can’t sing it, you go onto the next tape.”
Two weeks in, Tolan watched an audition by Rachel Zegler, a high-school student from Clifton, New Jersey, and knew immediately she was their Maria. “I had never heard Sondheim sung like that before, especially out of a 16-year-old. West Side Story is very operatic, so the fact it was coming out of this tiny creature, who was so charming, so appealing, was magical. And a huge sigh of relief, because as soon as you have one, you’re like, I can now focus on the other impossible roles I have to cast.” Even so, it would be a full year before Zegler was officially offered the role. “We saw Rachel nine times — to make sure she could hold the centre of a huge-budget film when she had not done anything before, professionally.”
To play Anita, Tolan wanted Ariana DeBose who was starring in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical on Broadway. “It was taking everything out of her, and she kept saying no [to an audition].” But Tolan would not be denied. “I called late one night and said, ‘Can you come in tomorrow for Steven, in person?’ And she was like, ‘It’s 10 o’clock. There’s eight pages of sides [to learn]. I can’t possibly prepare.’” In the end, DeBose agreed to audition. She sang and danced, but when Spielberg asked her to read, DeBose refused. He asked if she would come back another time. She said yes and won the part.
Finding someone for the role of Bernardo took six months and a spot of detective work. “We were looking everywhere. And I saw everybody,” says Tolan, who then remembered David Alvarez, who had jointly won a Tony Award aged 14 for the Broadway production of Billy Elliot but had since stopped acting. “We had seen two of the three Billy Elliots, and I was like, ‘We haven’t seen David Alvarez. Where’s David Alvarez? We need David Alvarez.’ In my bones, I thought this guy can do it.”
But first they needed to find him. “It took two weeks to track him down. We direct messaged him on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. He had just gotten back from backpacking in Mexico, so looked like a lumberjack with this huge beard and flannel shirt, but then was doing a pirouette on his audition tape. As soon as I got it, I was like, I don’t want to jinx it and say it out loud, but I think we found Bernardo. I called Steven and Kristie. They were on a plane. Kristie said, ‘Send it to us right now.’ And David Alvarez was in a room with Steven a week later.”
As with DeBose, Mike Faist, who would go on to play Riff, the leader of the Jets, was familiar to Tolan from the theatre. “Mike had just come out of Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway and was on my radar,” says Tolan, who had cast him in a play in New Jersey years earlier. Faist auditioned for one of the Jets alongside 100 other hopefuls, but during that call-back week, Faist emerged “as a natural leader” and the perfect Riff. So much so that when it seemed like Faist might be tied up filming the Amazon show Panic, Spielberg was prepared to delay the West Side Story shoot to accommodate him. Faist ended up with a supporting actor Bafta nomination, while co-star DeBose has supporting actress nominations from Bafta, Oscar and Screen Actors Guild.
Career arc
Tolan started her career as a casting assistant at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater, quickly becoming casting director for the city’s Vineyard Theatre before making the move into film and television with Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity (2002) and John Sayles’ Casa De Los Babys (2003). She credits Mira Nair’s The Namesake (2006) as the film that “showed I was possibly, maybe good at this”. In 2016, she received the first of her four Primetime Emmy Award nominations to date, all for outstanding casting for a comedy series, winning in 2018 for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Since West Side Story, Tolan has cast Matt Reeves’ The Batman alongside Lucy Bevan, although she says lead Robert Pattinson’s name was being bandied about when she came on board — “so I can’t take credit for that, but I can take credit for the other big players, and for Zoë Kravitz” — as well as Spielberg’s next project The Fabelmans, loosely based on his childhood, with Michelle Williams and Paul Dano playing his parents and Gabriel LaBelle as Spielberg stand-in Sammy. “It was equally hard [as West Side Story], just in different ways. You’re trying to cast essences. And the only people that know the essences of the Spielberg family are the Spielbergs. I don’t know Steven’s sisters. I didn’t know his parents. So, it was all through Steven. And you always trust in Steven. Steven Spielberg is a genius.”
Tolan’s work on West Side Story has been nominated for best casting at the Baftas — a relatively new category, but one she feels is warranted. “Casting is an art form and should be recognised as such. We’re no different than a production designer, editor, costume designer or cinematographer — we are fulfilling the director’s vision. It just so happens it’s with people. I’m thrilled the Emmys do it. And I’m thrilled Bafta does it.”
While Oscar has yet to follow suit with a casting award, Tolan believes it’s only a matter of time. “A few years ago, the Academy did acknowledge we are a group that matter and created a branch for casting directors. David Rubin is president of the Academy and a phenomenal casting director. I think people are aware we would like one, and our hope is someday they will see the artists we are, and the contributions we make, are equal to the other designers.”
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