In a conversation with Panchami Ghavri, a leading Casting Director, Shravan Shah, Content Head, MissMalini spoke about Casting being an unconventional professional, and how no one plans to be a casting director, one is just rolled into it. Panchami tells us that she started working when she was 18 years old, for one of Ayan Mukerji‘s film. Assisted a casting director, and felt like she could do this and came naturally to her. It is an unconventional job and she says that no one intends to become a casting director, you just become one and says that it was ‘one of the best things’ to happen to her.
She said that she’s glad she got the kickstart early and has an experience of a decade now. But people in the field see her as a young casting director when she is not, and those who haven’t seen her expect her to be much older. She also mentioned how she started taking workshops, but also stopped soon after since it was such a big responsibility and wanted to do it only if she was able to give it her 100%. She talks about her experience casting for Class and how proud she was to see them gain this overnight fame, and being the mama bear as she calls herself, checked in with them to see if they were still auditioning. She believes the director of Class, truly gave her space to be creative, experiment and open her mind, which then led her to opening the minds of the talents. She also mentions how much recognition she got for this casting, and how it was 10 folds of what she got for Kapoor and Sons.
Here’s her talking about casting for Netflix’s superhit show Class:
The conversation ends with her highlighting the fact that we are now open to unconventional leads in shows and films and the audience is willing to give these a chance, which opens doors to many more unconventional stories as well.