How Avy Kaufman Went from Casting Background Actors to Casting 'Succession'

Kaufman revisits working with Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee, Wes Craven, and many more!

Avy Kaufman didn’t move to New York City with big screen ambitions, but one thing led to another, and she wound up becoming one of the most successful and prolific casting directors in Hollywood.

She cast Leonardo DiCaprio in The Basketball Diaries and Haley Joel Osment in his unforgettable one-two punch, The Sixth Sense and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. She’s worked on a number of films with Ang Lee and two films with the legendary Wes Craven, Music of the Heart and Scream 4. If we jump to her most recent credits, the list is loaded with Oscar contenders and winners like Tár, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, King Richard, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and more.

Kaufman’s had great success with the series format as well having cast a number of acclaimed Emmy-winning shows, but there’s one series in particular that’s been an especially significant force during awards season the last few years, a show that will likely go down in history as one of the best shows ever made. It’s HBO’s Succession.

While celebrating her third Emmy nomination for the series, Kaufman took the time to join me for a Collider Ladies Night conversation to revisit some of the key experiences that paved the way to casting Succession, beginning with her original ambitions to become a ballet dancer:

“I went to New York. I wanted to be a ballet dancer. That’s when I said I better stand up straight. I’m a small girl. I got there and I thought, ‘This will never happen.’ I met somebody who met somebody, and they connected me to someone in advertising, and they interviewed me and I was casting in a big advertising agency at a very young age. And then I was fighting for certain actors. I had cast famous actors in commercials — they weren’t famous then. A bunch of them that people go, ‘Oh, really? Wow!’ But people I would fight for then, they would go, ‘Well, they didn’t have this, they didn’t have that.’”

Kaufman’s drive to fight for the actors she believed in most inspired her to pivot to casting film. That pivot wasn’t easy to make though — until she met the right people. She continued:

“I knocked on every door to become a casting director for film and wasn’t hired, so I started doing extras, which was completely different. You know, waking up at three in the morning to do extras. Then John Sayles found me doing location casting and hired me to do Matewan and then Jodie [Foster] hired me for Little Man Tate, and things happened. Ang Lee came into my life. Great things happened. I’m very appreciative.”

Even as Kaufman continued to secure one high-profile project after the next, she never lost that drive to advocate for actors she believed had that special spark. If you look through her filmography, you’ll notice that quite a few actors pop up in many of her films. For example, Emma Roberts. How exactly did Kaufman know Roberts would be able to nail both sides of Jill in Scream 4, the innocent cousin and the fame-hungry killer? Here’s what Kaufman said:

“Because when she was maybe eight years old I cast her as Penélope Cruz and Johnny Depp’s daughter in Blow. I used to cast kids all the time, and I would just sit and talk to them for hours to find out who they were because I don’t think you can really teach a kid how to act. So because, at a young age, I got to know her a little bit, that’s why I knew she could do both.”

With so many years of experience, Kaufman is clearly at the top of her game, but the reality of a cast process is that it’s a collaboration. There are times when Kaufman brings a suggestion to a director or showrunner and they choose to go in a different direction. In fact, it happened on Succession. But, there was a particular time when showrunner Jesse Armstrong and the team were wary of Kaufman’s casting choice, but Kaufman had such faith in this actor that she pushed for her. And it’s a good thing she did too because Zoe Winters proved to be a major standout, especially in the final season of the series.

“She came in, she did it, and I couldn’t stop laughing. Zoe Winters. She’s so good, and you know what? Was it the physical type we were looking for? Somebody with bangs? Everything! It’s like, who do you bring to Brian Cox? Literally, you’ve got a world of actresses, who’s gonna play opposite Brian Cox? And often Jesse would call me and say, “Who do you think?” Because there’s a lot of writers! There’s like, how many? Eight writers? There’s a lot of writers. Everybody’s got an opinion, and I was just going, “Please, please, please!” Because nobody nailed it the way she nailed it.”

There’s no doubt Succession will continue to dominate this Emmys season, but I also have all the faith in the world we’ll continue to see Kaufman’s name pop up on the awards circuit going forward. In fact, it could happen as early as next year. Kaufman has high hopes for Colman Domingo’s work in the upcoming Netflix release Rustin about Bayard Rustin, the legendary activist and architect behind the 1963 March on Washington.

“A film that’s coming out this year that’s called Rustin, when you see it – if he’s not nominated for an Oscar, Colman [Domingo], the gentleman who plays Rustin is phenomenal.”

Eager to hear even more about Kaufman’s journey from aspiring ballet dancer to casting Succession? Check out her episode of Collider Ladies Night at the top of this article, or you can listen to the interview in podcast form below:

Perri Nemiroff has been part of the Collider team since 2012. She hosts and produces the interview series, Collider Ladies Night, a show geared towards highlighting the need-to-know female voices in film and television.Perri's a proud graduate of Columbia University's Film MFA program and member of the Critics Choice Association. Perri splits her time between Los Angeles and New York, but wherever the film and television coverage takes her, she goes!