Interview:Jason La Padura

On June 29, 2007, RyanGibsonStewart held an interview via phone with Heroes casting director, Jason La Padura.

Ryan Stewart: I want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule for an interview. I know you're very busy casting for Heroes and other shows. Just out of curiosity, what other shows are you casting right now, or is it just Heroes?

Jason La Padura: Well, we're also going to be doing the new CBS series Cane. It stars Jimmy Smits. It's about a Cuban-American family in South Florida who are in the sugar, rum, and nightclub business.

I'm sure that those shows are taking up a lot of your time.

Yeah. [laughs]

Well, I know you're a member of the CSA, the Casting Society of America. I'm just curious what kind of training or education you need to be a casting director.

Well, you know, there's no set sort of course of study for something like casting . I got into casting because I had been working in the business since I was a teenager. I had originally gotten in as an actor. I started as an actor and stage manager, and then I was looking for something to do. I lived in New York when I was a kid. I had been going to the theater since I was, you know, like 12 years old.

I know you did some Broadway.

Yes, I'd been going to Broadway since from a very young age, and I'd seen a lot of actors on stage. I worked at the public theater back in the '70's as a stage manager. So I had seen a lot of actors backstage as well as on the different stages that were there, and I was looking for a place to put all this knowledge. I ran into a friend of mine who used to work at the casting department at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and she had an opening in her office and that's when I went to work for her. That's how I got into that.

There are specific requirements to become a member of CSA, but those are more like, you have to have two years online experience, you know, certain criteria you have to meet to become a CSA member.

Right, so there's no formal training, just criteria you have to meet.

There isn't formal training, no, there isn't. It's one of those things that almost anybody can say they can be a casting director, and sometimes I do think that people do kind of wake up in the morning and go, "Oh, I can do that!" We have a joke where we say that everybody has two jobs in life: their own and casting. Because everybody, even my mother, will say, "You know who'd be great for that part?..." [laughs]

Actually, that was one of the questions one of the members on our site had--What if somebody knows of somebody who's going to be perfect for, you know, the next Heroes role, then how do we get ahold of you for that?

Yeah, exactly. Like I said, everybody thinks they can do it.

Now you own your business with your sister, right? What's that like, working with your sister, Natalie Hart?

It's fantastic. We're very close, obviously. When we were kids, we moved around a lot. Our parents were artists. So we moved from place to place, and so we had a hard time setting up friendships with other people because every 6-9 months, we'd move again. So we kept leaving our friends behind. So we became very, very close. We also have two brothers.

Are they in the business also?

No, they're not. But Natalie and I are particularly close. When I was back in New York, I was in business with a man named Stanley Soble. Our assistant went home for the Christmas holidays and she never came back. I was sort of left in the lurch, and I asked Natalie if she wanted to come to work for us and she said she would. That was, I don't know how many years ago, 20 years ago? [laughs] And we're still working together.

That's really neat. I'm sure it's forged a nice relationship between the two of you.

Well it's great because it's a small family business. I mean, you know, Keri Owens, who's the associate on Heroes, Keri's been with us now for like 8 years! Melissa, who is our associate on Cane, has been with us for four years. We pride ourselves in trying to elevate our assistants to associate positions on projects that we're doing. We like to think of ourselves, as I said, as a small family business.

That's fantastic. Now, I did have a couple of questions about casting for Heroes.

Sure.

You cast for major characters and for minor characters. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. As long as somebody actually has something to say, we cast that role.

Okay. What's that process like for either a minor character or a major character.

Well, it's different.