Allison Jones
speaker
268 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Allison Jones’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard · Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director) · 18 Dec 2024
podcast
So he came in and he was killer funny. We read great people for the Veep pilot because that writing is Armando Iannucci. And Julia came in for the sessions and read with people. So that was very enjoyable. But Tim came in and killed it. But his competition was stiff. And when we got to the network at HBO, he was great.
And after talking, I was able to hear how they came to the conclusion that Tim Simons was the way to go. And again, against some very big comedy people. And Julia would talk about it and how she wanted to act with these people. Julia was a large part of picking that cast. She said about Tony Hale versus the competition for Tony Hale, I would not be embarrassed to ask Tony Hale to get me a Tampax.
Right. And that's how he decided he would be the perfect bag man. She said, Tony would not embarrass me. The other person might embarrass me. And it turns out that we ended up using all the runner-ups in recurring roles on Veep. What a freaking cast. Wait, do you want to tell Phyllis? Oh, Phyllis. I don't know if this is generally known.
I think it is that Phyllis was my associate for seven or eight years. And we were casting the pilot of The Office. With Ken Kwapis, we were in the room reading. We had two days of final testing for all the different combinations we could use for the office. I was reading and Phyllis was filming.
And Ken Kwapis just sort of tiptoed over to me and said, let Phyllis read with the actors because I think she might be good in the background. It was like, of course she would. Look at the people in the British office in the background. They're real looking people.
And so, yes, we let Phyllis read and she went in to read with the test between like Krasinski and Jenna and a lot of other people. I had previously been reading with Steve and a few other people. And she was great. We were so excited. And then Greg, when he faxed over the pilot and there was one line for Phyllis, we went. How exciting.
Because at that time, Phyllis was going to make like $630 for the day. And that was exciting, SAG scale.
Yeah, in 2003, right about the time I met Dax Shepard. Yeah.
Okay, good. I wouldn't have a clue. And if somebody says to me, oh, they have so many followers or they're this on Tic Tac, it's not a negative for me, but it means, well, they're not a trained actor. Maybe they're funny. I'll look at a clip and it's like that person's not going to be able to act. And I've been wrong many times. But usually it's a version of that.
Almost 100%. Movies have to have a star attached to get it made. To get any financing, you probably need two or three, no matter how low the budget. Even maybe the lower the budget, you need the financiers to say, we got Kristen Bell.
And TV frequently now for the streamers, they probably have a project attached to like I'm currently doing Bill Lawrence's show with Steve Carell, but we're casting everybody around him.
It's so much more rewarding to give someone a break. Yes.
I don't know about that. I couldn't speak for other people.
You might be more of an expert in that than I, but I know that... We all have our favorites based on how we perceive the talent and how they can deliver and how they haven't been given a shot to do it yet. I'll read something and think, oh, this is perfect for Monica Padman or this is perfect for Rory Scovel or something. And they haven't been given that huge shot yet. Yeah.
It's heartbreaking because my job then is to talk the director into it and to show them stuff or another audition where they've done it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn't. People will listen to you and then people won't listen to you.
He would probably be the worst auditioner.
They don't have any of the environment. They don't have the other actors. There's the reverse. There are people who are great auditioners who then on the set, you don't get anything more from them.
Yeah, you get the line reading from the audition. However, a kid who was great from the time he was 12, Leonardo DiCaprio.
He has never given a bad performance. He's always almost better than some of the movies he's in. Killers of the Flower Moon. Any other actor in that part would have been like they were doing a role from a sketch in Hootenanny. You know, it was like, are you kidding me? He was heartbreakingly good in that role. And he was so over the top.
And the version of that in comedy is like Steve Carell as Michael Scott. So over the top, but still unbelievably real and good. You gotta be a genius to pull those off.
Showing 221–240 of 268 · page 12 of 14
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