By Brandon T. McClure (@btmcclure @fakenerdpodcast)
The Defenders Saga could generate a list of 50 defining moments all on its own, but this series isn’t about that. However, it felt like a disservice to not mention them at all since they’re so beloved. So while you wait for entry 39, here’s an interlude about one of the most exciting television endeavors in Marvel’s history. To revisit previous posts, visit our site HERE.
Enjoy the ride as we count down from 50 of the most defining moments and share your thoughts in the comments.
Enjoy your holidays and look forward to continuing the countdown in 2023!
• Sarah Halley Finn: The MCU’s Secret Sauce •
INTERLUDE # 2
CASTING DIRECTOR
SHOWS: Loki, Black Panther, Iron Man, Avengers, Captian America (pretty much ALL MCU - check out IMDB here.
MCU fans are intimately familiar with many names associated with the making of the franchise they love so much. Many directors and producers have become almost as popular as the characters and actors. Most notably, fans associate the franchise with Kevin Feige, the producer of almost every Marvel film since the year 2000, and the architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But one name might be unfamiliar to people and it’s a name that shouldn’t be. Behind the scenes, there has been one name casting every single iconic character in these films and her name is Sarah Halley Finn.
Sometimes credited as Sarah Finn, her name has been attached to all but one Marvel Studios-produced movie and show since Iron Man (The one exception being The Incredible Hulk). Finn studied theatre and history at Yale while she ran her college’s black box theater. When she graduated she worked at the Ensemble Studio Theatre with east-coast theater friend Risa Bramon Garcia. It was Garcia who encouraged Finn to go into casting and she was able to land a job at Paramount doing just that. She has mentioned that her time at the Ensemble Studio Theatre was a useful foundation since she had to serve in multiple roles. “Casting is all of those things,” she says. “It’s directing, it’s producing, it’s acting. And frankly, it’s being able…to constantly see the bigger picture and navigate it” she told Marie Claire writer Jessica M. Goldstein for a piece written in November of this year.
Her first credited film on IMDb is a film called Paulie which is about a talking parrot who “recounts his travels looking for his original owner to a Russian janitor who helps him to the end of his journey.” Before jumping into the Marvel universe, she was casting many films like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and Crash. The 2004 film Crash, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture ended up being a major milestone for her. She told Marie Claire “I think the success of that movie and seeing the audience reaction at the time was a turning point for me.” Crash has a bit of a bad reputation these days, but the film was a major cultural hit in 2004 and sports an all-star cast with the likes of Don Cheadle, Thandiwe Newton, and Brendan Fraser.
Even though her post-Crash success can’t be denied, it was the 2003 film S.W.A.T. that proved to be her pathway to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The 2003 cop drama was produced by Louis D'Esposito, who would help build the MCU with Kevin Feige and continues to serve as producer and co-president at Marvel. She obviously impressed him and he decided to bring her in to cast Iron Man, which eventually led to the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as the title role. Downey’s casting was a controversial move for many reasons at the time and would set the tone for, not just the franchise, but her style as a casting director. She believed in him and proved all the naysayers wrong. When she was originally brought on, she was apparently unaware of Feige’s ambitious plan to build an interconnected universe of multiple franchises and heroes. It wasn’t until she was casting Captain America: The First Avengers that she heard about The Avengers. Finn now muses that if she “had any idea where this was all going, I would’ve run out the door.”
The only MCU film that Sarah Finn did not cast was 2008s The Incredible Hulk. That film's casting was done by Robin D. Cook and Laray Mayfield, which sadly creates another reason for MCU fans to write off that film. While most of the cast from that film has and will return to the MCU, the lead star notably did not return for The Avengers. Finn got the last laugh (so to speak) when Edward Norton decided not to return for The Avengers and was replaced, by Finn, with Mark Ruffolo. There is a narrative floating around the internet that suggests Ruffolo was the first choice for the role of Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk but there’s no way to know for sure if that’s true. Either way, thanks to Norton’s decision, every one of the original Avengers was cast by Sarah Halley Finn.
While she seems to be the exclusive casting director for Marvel Studios, she’s not exclusively with Marvel. She is able to work on other films and often works with Jon Favreau on films and shows like Chef and The Book of Boba Fett. Notably, she was the casting director on Everything, Everywhere, All At Once which many people believe deserves to be in the 2023 Oscar race for many of its leads and the film itself. While casting directing doesn’t get a specific award (presumably due to its history), an actor winning is certainly an award on its own. While the major Oscar inclusion battle seems to be on stunt work, the next battlefield should be casting directing.
Finn leads a casting team of 13 women, which is not unheard of in this job. Historically casting departments have been dominated by women, most likely due to the job belonging to secretaries of major movie directors in the days of old Hollywoodland. Most of the stories we take for granted now were battles she was determined to win. She, herself, recounts a story in which Chris Evans wasn’t being considered for the role of Captain America. But she likes to find an actor's unspoken strength so she knew that Evans could pull off the World War II superhero, even if the higher-ups weren’t convinced. Evans had played the Fantastic Four character Johnny Storm twice before the MCU so it took some convincing. To this day Evans is the only MCU actor who has played a pre-MCU Marvel superhero.
Like many jobs in Hollywood, being a casting director is often a thankless job. Most of the time when you see online praise for an actor in a role, it’s lobbied by the directors or the producers. How often does James Gunn get the credit for casting the Guardians or does Ryan Coogler get the credit for casting Chadwick Boseman? That’s not to say that these directors don’t have input. Casting, like everything in film, is a collaborative effort. Casting directors often have to find the right actor to match the director's vision. But Sarah Finn is uniquely positioned to see actors for one franchise and keep them in mind for another. For example, when Chadwick Boseman went out for the role of Drax the Destroyer for James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, she knew he wasn’t right for the role, but felt he’d be right for the lead in Black Panther. Casting a film is an art in its own right and should be recognized as such.
“Sarah’s judge of character is why these castings are so spot-on, and why fans like me continue to praise the MCU for what it is” Iman Villani told Marie Claire. With a franchise as popular as the MCU, the reason why fans keep coming back is due to the characters. If the MCU wasn’t so well cast then the films wouldn’t have the staying power they have now. Especially with more and more legacy characters coming into the franchise, Finn’s job is more important now than it ever was. “She has such incredible instincts,” Jac Schaeffer (WandaVision showrunner) tells Marie Claire, and always pushes for “the freshest take on the character.” Schaeffer continues to say that “Sarah is really great at internalizing the writer’s intention and then finding a new flavor for that: something that’s unexpected for the audience and will feel special or unique.” Schaeffer’s words are a great example of why Finn is a key ingredient to making the franchise work. Even if a film doesn’t connect with audiences, they will still be eager to see the characters again.
Having been doing this job for over 14 years now, Finn notes that it’s gotten a bit easier than it was back then. In the beginning superhero films weren’t something actors were interested in doing, so Finn had to call all sorts of actors in the hope that they would even do a screen test. But nowadays, asking about doing an MCU film is a common question during press junkets. Every actor and director is asked about whether they would do a Marvel film, which helps Finn know who she can call. Social Media has also helped since actors will drop hints as to whether or not they’d be interested or fans will throw out fan castings in the hopes that someone like Finn will see them. It may or may not be comforting to know that Finn doesn’t take fan castings too seriously. She sees them and will sometimes go with them, such as in the most recent appearance of John Krasinski as Reed Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness but mostly she followers her own instincts. More often than not, however, she wants an unknown quantity which has been an important part of the MCU’s casting process.
When it comes to the MCU, it’s the characters that keep people coming back over and over again. People tune in to the Disney+ shows because they want to fall in love with a new character or revisit an old friend. At the end of the day, that’s what these characters have become to fans: old friends. When they die, we mourn, when they succeed, we cheer. While Kevin Feige may be the architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sarah Finn is the reason fans have fallen in love with these characters in such a profound and personal way. She is the secret sauce that makes the MCU work and an important part of the ever-growing franchise. With more spotlight being given to the many behind-the-scenes jobs, it’s vital that she gets the recognition she deserves.