The Force Awakens Casting Director Given Special BAFTA Award
By Elaine Tveit
Nina Gold, casting director for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, was given the Bafta Special Award for her work this past year.
Nina Gold, the casting director responsible for bringing in John Boyega and Daisy Ridley to audition for the next generation of Star Wars films received a Bafta Special Award at the Bafta TV Craft Awards yesterday (via Telegraph).
Gold’s task to find new stars for The Force Awakens, the first live action Star Wars film in ten years and the beginning of a new trilogy, must have seemed insurmountable. Yet she met the task with alacrity and pulled out an amazing duo of fresh talent, who are now international stars.
In an interview with The Independent, Gold was quoted as saying,
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"It was “brilliant not having to cast someone from the same old list of names”, she says: “You don’t want somebody who was ‘that guy from some other franchise’. You want them to entirely belong to This World.”"
Casting directors aren’t often among the names recognized as being integral movers and shakers for films like The Force Awakens. You always hear about the cast, the director, the visual effects team. The casting director sort of falls in the background, and yet it was Gold who saw the potential in John and Daisy and got them auditions in front of J.J. Abrams. That decision of Gold’s ultimately led to the casting of two of the new Big Three, the trio of main characters which varies from trilogy to trilogy in the Star Wars franchise.
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Finding actors to play the new main heroes in a blockbuster franchise, which already has a standard of creating iconic characters, is a tall order; it’s like asking, “Find me the next Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia!” It seems impossible, but Gold did it, and we here at Dork Side congratulate her on her accomplishments and skill as a judge of true talent.