And the Oscar goes to… Casting!: The Academy adds new category for 98th ceremony
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced casting directors are now eligible for Oscars starting in 2026. Photo courtesy of Unsplash, photo collage by EMILY PARIS, Photo Editor
It looks like some of the entertainment industry’s most unsung heroes are finally getting the spotlight they deserve. On Feb. 8, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that a new Oscars category was being added: casting. Starting in 2026 (the 98th Oscars ceremony), casting directors will be eligible for Oscar consideration and could win the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Casting.
This development comes after tireless lobbying done by the Casting Society of America (CSA). The Panther spoke with Chapman University’s head of casting, Russell Boast, who is also a co-head of the screen acting program and a former president of the CSA. Boast explained how much work went into securing this major win, starting even before he joined the board of the CSA in 2012.
“At first… we were just lobbying directly to the Academy,” Boast said. “We weren’t getting resistance; we just weren’t getting a lot of calls returned. So, we decided to switch the way that we were doing it to focus on highlighting what casting directors did. That was a combination of going to the Hollywood Reporter, going to all the big news outlets and encouraging them to talk about casting.”
Boast started out as an actor himself before developing his love of casting. He pioneered Chapman’s casting program — he heavily encourages students to enroll in his Art of Casting course — and started a mentorship program through the CSA in order to educate the next generation.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Well why did it take so long to get an Oscar category or be recognized in our profession?’, and it really is because there was never previously anywhere to train to be a casting director,” Boast told The Panther. “One of the first things I did when I got on the board (of the CSA) — and I was on the board for 8 years — was to create a training program for people who are interested in pursuing casting because it didn’t exist. You couldn’t study it anywhere… which is how I got to Chapman.”
Think of your favorite movie. Now imagine it with a different cast. Would it work as well? Casting directors really have to trust their instincts and have good taste. Susie Landau Finch, an acting professor and a staple of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts Career Center, gave some insight into how essential casting directors are and how collaborative the process of casting actually is.
“Good casting directors are visionaries. They’re seeing the potential in someone, and they’re selling that to the director. And then the director sees that and they’re together selling that to the (producers). And people don’t know that… Some directors won’t cast someone if they can’t see the whole performance right now in the audition, but it’s my job as the casting person, when I’m casting or when I’m producing, to see that potential.”
Landau Finch listed “Monster,” which was cast by Ferne Cassel, as an example of a casting director taking a risk with an actor that paid off immensely.
“It was obviously not the type for Charlize Theron to be a serial killer, and she had to really play against her type to do it,” Landau-Finch told The Panther. “And at first, nobody believed (Cassel) with that idea and didn’t think she’d want to do it. So that would be an example of where casting made the movie.”
The film earned Theron an Oscar for Best Actress and Cassel an Artios Award for Best Casting for an independent feature. Landau-Finch is hopeful that we will see appreciation for this not-so-hidden talent of casting directors in the coming years.
The Dodge community is also celebrating the acknowledgment the Academy has finally given to casting directors. Junior creative producing majors Zola Franchi and Dakota Booker have both earned their stripes on the sets of student productions. They’ve learned firsthand just how difficult a casting director’s job can be.
“Thousands of people can sometimes go into a movie, and the casting director and the casting assistants and whatnot have a lot of pressure on them,” Franchi said. “I think it gets really weird when it becomes a really profitable movie, like the ones that tend to go to the Oscars, because I think a lot can be said that certain people are put into movies because they’re profitable… the casting director (has) to balance marketability and also the talent of the actors and chemistry.”
When asked to name something about casting that most people may not know, Booker — a former student of Boast — had an interesting answer: “How well the casting directors need to understand the overall story”.
“Obviously they need to understand ‘star quality’ and what makes a good actor, but the casting directors need to really get the story to understand the character’s motives. Also, it’s a huge process of being able to give notes to those actors because they know what’s gonna happen in the story.”
Franchi and Booker each have some words of wisdom for Chapman students looking to pursue a career in casting.
“We have a great resource: we have Russell Boast at our school,” Franchi said. “He’s great in that he’s done this professionally. I advise people who have the space in their schedule to take (his class)… It’s super interesting that the professors we know, we forget sometimes (that they) work in the real world.”
If any students are interested in casting student films but unsure of how to get started, Booker wants to reassure them that it’s much easier to get involved than they may think.
“The second you say you’re interested in casting, (there are) so many people (who) need the help,” Booker told The Panther. “There are more projects than you think (that) need help finding a casting director, so don’t be afraid to throw yourself in the ring.”
Correction: A previous version of this article spelled Susie Landau Finch as Susie Landau-Finch. This spelling has since been corrected. We regret the error.