Carmen Cuba has the very cool job of being the casting director for Stranger Things, which features a variety of excellent young actors. Cuba, who won an Emmy for her work on HBO’s Behind the Candelabra, is now casting the third season of Netflix’s fantasy hit, which started production in May. After all that time, it’s a little surprising to learn that she’s still casting roles, but as she told The Hollywood Reporter, casting such a widely-watched show comes with its own set of challenges:
"There’s a certain storyline that’s challenging that we have to keep going back to the well for… There’s a lot of secrecy, and we can’t say what parts we’re looking for, so it’s still a weird challenge. I know that if we said, “We’re looking for this and it’s for ‘Stranger Things’,” we would have tons more options, but it’s still a lot of work."
So whatever storyline Cuba is casting, it’s so secret that they she even tell the people she’s auditioning that she’s casting Stranger Things. That’s obfuscation worthy of Game of Thrones.
If you watched the finale of Stranger Things season 2, you know the Shadow Monster/Mind Flayer — the big damn boogie man of past nine episodes — hadn’t actually been defeated, but merely thwarted. Season 3 will no doubt follow Eleven and her friends as they try and defeat their nemesis and its minions, hopefully once and for all…but not so much that we don’t get a season 4.
And also there’ll be a mall.
THR caught up with Cuba in the midst of her work on the judge’s panel for the 2018 Heath Ledger Scholarship, which reviews the work of 10 up-and-coming Australian actors who have made it to the final stages of the program. Also on the judge’s panel: Game of Thrones director Jeremy Podeswa, the guy behind episodes like “Dragonstone” and “The Dragon and the Wolf.” Podeswa isn’t directing anything for the final season of the show, and is happy to just be a fan. “I want to see who ends up on the Iron Throne. I could have very easily found out what happens, but I don’t want to know. I’d rather just be an audience member like anybody else. I’m as much in the dark as anyone else.”
He has more self-control than us.
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