Cassandra Kulukundis spoke with members of the media in the Oscars Press Room about becoming the first person to ever win the Oscar for “Best Casting” for “One Battle After Another.” She is of Greek-American descent.
On the importance to her and Paul Thomas Anderson on seeking fresh new faces to cast on that film (in addition to A-listers), she said, “Authenticity. In a lot of ways, it keeps everyone on their toes. We don’t really know what’s going to come out of the real people’s mouths.
I mean yes, he wrote an idea, but at the same time, we use them as consultants. I mean a lot of the times it’s what you do.”
“So if you’re in the military, you’re playing military. If you’re a jail nurse, you’re playing a jail nurse. If you skateboard, you’re going to hang off a car in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, and that’s kind of the fun of it,” she noted.
“We love real actors as well,” she said. “You know, the ones who have trained, so we try to just keep it mixed because that’s what life is, isn’t it? I looked out in that sea of people there. There’s actors, there’s behind the scenes people, and everyone has a story to tell and we want to tell that story.”
On the evolution of her remarkable partnership with Paul Thomas Anderson over the past two decades, she remarked, “I mean we were children, I think. Me younger, of course. We grew up watching movies and then we grew up making movies together. That’s why this night is insane.”
“This is our 10th movie, and the collaboration changes on every movie because it depends on what we’re doing. ‘Phantom Thread’ cannot be remotely compared to ‘Magnolia’ or ‘Boogie Nights.’ It’s just wild, and I feel like ‘One Battle’ in a lot of ways combined all of that,
Everything that we’ve ever thought, said, seen together. It’s number 10, and it kind of all makes sense I guess, we’re full circle here,” she elaborated.
When asked what she saw in Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti when they were doing their auditions, Kulukundis responded, “Well, I mean Teyana is a fighter. I read so, so many people —women — for that role. And Teyana just, I mean, she wanted it and she fought and she fought and then she got it and then she kept fighting when she had it. There’s just no end in sight.”
“Chase, was the exact opposite. She was so demure, so polite, so fresh, so new and so innocent. So, for her it was like, ‘Girl, you got to be a fighter,’ and she did it. She found it. She worked within herself. She found things that she didn’t even know she had and now she’s a shooting star,” Kulukundis elaborated.
“So both of them, they’re like planets actually. They’re amazing and you’re drawn to them. I’m worried that this might be the end. I might not see them for a long long time, but I’ll see them on screen. So, yay,” she exclaimed.
Regarding the particular performances that moved her in this movie (and reminded her why she believed in those actors that were cast for the role), she stated, “Oh God, there were so many. Almost in every 10 minutes there’s something that makes me go, ‘I’m so glad I worked on this movie.’ I watched it 30 days in a row with a paying audience in New York City.”
“I love every bit of it,” she admitted. “In general, I just love the fact that we got so many different types of people in there. A member from every military service in every way. I love my El Paso gang, my jail nurses to my skateboarders, and in general, the letter! The letter we were never 100% sure on it.”
“Some people in the crew were talking. Then, Teyana’s voice cracks and she just brings me to tears. That and Leo talking about how he can’t do his daughter’s hair. It’s all just so, so good. It’s iconic, funny, and heartfelt. The whole movie is so good,” Kulukundis concluded.
