Who gets to be on the big screen?

In Rocks, a teenage girl strug­gles to care for her lit­tle broth­er after being aban­doned by her moth­er; In Bird, a young girl seeks mag­i­cal adven­ture away from her unpre­dictable father; In After­sun, a young girl’s father-daugh­ter hol­i­day comes to hold melan­choly mean­ing. These mov­ing, char­ac­ter-focused recent films share one thing: they were cast by Lucy Pardee. The BAF­TA-win­ning cast­ing direc­tor has worked with some of the UK’s finest direct­ing tal­ent, from Andrea Arnold to Jonathan Glaz­er to Lynne Ram­say, dis­cov­ered count­less home­grown stars and had decades of indus­try insight ded­i­cat­ed to widen­ing diver­si­ty on the big screen.

Pardee’s care­ful cast­ing has paid off since her first cast­ing direc­tor cred­it with Arnold’s Amer­i­can Hon­ey to her most recent film, Daisy-May Hudson’s fea­ture debut, Lol­lipop. The poignant dra­ma fol­lows sin­gle moth­er Mol­ly (Posey Ster­ling), fresh out of prison, try­ing to regain cus­tody of her chil­dren but unable to while she’s home­less. It’s a pierc­ing nar­ra­tive that required a skilled cast. Demys­ti­fy­ing the cast­ing process, Pardee notes that find­ing the right actors is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent with every project, but with Lol­lipop, the focus was con­nec­tion and authen­tic­i­ty. ​“Because Daisy-May’s a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er, meet­ing peo­ple is real­ly impor­tant,” Pardee explains. ​“She’s rather alter­na­tive. She want­ed to bring a can­dle to light, but I said no, so instead she brought scents to neu­tralise the energy.”

Pardee shares that this inter­est in actors with lived expe­ri­ence is where street cast­ing comes in. ​“There’s a real mis­con­cep­tion that we just wan­der up to peo­ple,” Pardee clar­i­fies. ​“Some­times we do, but street cast­ing is impos­si­ble with­out con­tacts with organ­i­sa­tions because they will help us trans­late oppor­tu­ni­ties for the groups of peo­ple they work with.” Pardee’s expe­ri­ence work­ing with the­atre com­pa­nies Clean Break (an organ­i­sa­tion illu­mi­nat­ing the sto­ries of women in prison) and Card­board Cit­i­zens (the UK’s only home­less peo­ple’s pro­fes­sion­al the­atre com­pa­ny) informed Lollipop’s out­reach. Pardee says the very pur­pose of this approach is ​“about mak­ing the ramp into the room acces­si­ble to peo­ple with­out pre­vi­ous act­ing experience.”

Lol­lipop embod­ies this out­reach. For instance, Ter­ri­Ann Cousins, who plays Molly’s moth­er, came through Clean Break when Pardee pre­vi­ous­ly cast her in Sil­ver Haze. Also, Idil Ahmed, who plays Molly’s sup­port­ive child­hood friend Ami­na, joined Lol­lipop through an organ­i­sa­tion that works with East African and Soma­li com­mu­ni­ties after see­ing Kosar Ali, an actor of Soma­li descent, star in Rocks. ​“I felt incred­i­bly proud that we could bridge Kosar into the indus­try with Rocks,” Pardee said. ​“Idil and her four chil­dren are huge fans of Rocks. She was one of the peo­ple mak­ing a con­nec­tion; Idil had nev­er act­ed before, but felt like this was an oppor­tu­ni­ty she could step into because some­one else had.”

Despite these con­nec­tions and hav­ing a slate of excit­ing projects, Pardee high­lights that she remains con­cerned about the shrink­ing space for new­com­ers in the indus­try. ​“There’s a real inse­cu­ri­ty at the moment in terms of projects being seen,” Pardee shares, adding that there’s added pres­sure on cast­ing direc­tors to work with actors with pro­files, the antithe­sis of inde­pen­dent film as ​“a cru­cible for launch­ing tal­ent.” In response to this indus­try-wide inse­cu­ri­ty in the arts, Pardee co-found­ed and serves as an advi­sor for We Are Bridge, an indus­try body com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing ​“peo­ple who have come into the indus­try through alter­na­tive path­ways, bridg­ing to their next oppor­tu­ni­ties.” It’s not just allow­ing an actor a first role, but help­ing them secure a second. 

This work sur­round­ing indus­try access is not just based on anec­do­tal expe­ri­ence; less than 10% of film and TV work­ers are from work­ing-class back­grounds, the low­est in a decade, accord­ing to Chan­nel 4​’s 2024 report. Pardee says pro­gres­sion towards diverse work­ing-class rep­re­sen­ta­tion is ​“not a cul­tur­al shift to the future, but it’s almost a cul­tur­al shift to the past… [the UK] has a tra­di­tion of work­ing class rep­re­sen­ta­tion; we’re not break­ing bound­aries that haven’t been bro­ken before, we’ve neglect­ed path­ways. Aus­ter­i­ty kicked the shit out of those path­ways which start­ed with dra­mas in schools and youth­clubs and access at com­mu­ni­ty level.”

Pardee cites Ado­les­cence as an inter­est­ing exam­ple, as much of the young cast came from grass­roots dra­ma organ­i­sa­tions. How­ev­er, these pro­grams aren’t free to access. ​“There’s a whole wave of tal­ent that, as soon as you put a price on it, isn’t able to do it,” Pardee notes. ​“Priv­i­lege does not equal tal­ent.” This bar­ri­er to entry is not only harm­ing the indus­try but also the qual­i­ty of inde­pen­dent film.

This invest­ment in the next gen­er­a­tion is also clear in sev­er­al recent films Pardee has worked on (Lol­lipop, Bird and After­sun), which see her tasked with find­ing chil­dren and young peo­ple who can han­dle emo­tion­al­ly mature scenes. Exem­pli­fy­ing this, Luke Howitt and Tegan-Mia Stan­ley Rhoads deliv­er fan­tas­tic per­for­mances as Molly’s chil­dren in Lol­lipop. Rhoads is par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive as she sobs and pleads for her moth­er to obey the rules to regain cus­tody of them. Pardee explains that reach­ing such emo­tions is built around fic­tion­al play and imag­i­na­tion; there’s an end goal, but the jour­ney to that point is up to each actor.

There has been a recent dia­logue about social media fol­low­ers dic­tat­ing who gets into the cast­ing room when it comes to cast­ing young peo­ple. ​“Not in my world!” Pardee laughs, remark­ing social media is a dou­ble-edged sword: though it has unlocked a door for acces­si­bil­i­ty, an over-reliance has led to a ​“gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who will send a self-tape based on, I think, how they look.” Pardee empha­sis­es that self-tapes will nev­er replace audi­tion­ing in the room, which is a safe space for fail­ure and imper­fec­tion: ​“I don’t know whether it’s COVID or social media, but there’s def­i­nite­ly risk aver­sion in the younger peo­ple com­ing through. In art, you must be able to take a swing, miss, and feel ok to take anoth­er one.”

Pardee’s upcom­ing slate includes much-antic­i­pat­ed projects, includ­ing Lynne Ramsay’s psy­cho­log­i­cal por­trait Die, My Love, star­ring Robert Pat­tin­son and Jen­nifer Lawrence. ​“We found Robert in a Greg­gs,” Pardee laughs. ​“I’ve been work­ing with [Ram­say] for quite a long time, but this is the first time we’ve cast a fea­ture film togeth­er. She cre­ates such a ripe, safe envi­ron­ment. I think that’s why we all do some of our best work with her, because of this safe­ty.” Pardee is also in the ​“very, very ear­ly days” of cast­ing How to Have Sex writer-direc­tor Mol­ly Man­ning Walker’s A24 show about girls’ foot­ball. Pardee notes she’s con­duct­ing a lot of out­reach and that authen­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion is a core focus for this cast­ing. ​“If you want to rep­re­sent a sto­ry authen­ti­cal­ly, I believe in: ​‘noth­ing about us with­out us’. Because Mol­ly is part of this com­mu­ni­ty, it’s so exciting.”

Many stars have passed through Pardee’s cast­ing process, but one of her most mem­o­rable was After­sun​’s Francesca Corio. Corio beat out 900 appli­ca­tions to star in Char­lotte Wells’ heart­break­ing film, oppo­site Paul Mescal. Pardee remem­bers audi­tion­ing 16 girls in a snow-cov­ered, emp­ty wed­ding venue in Glas­gow in 2021 with Welles and pro­duc­er Adele Roman­s­ki. Pardee recalls the spe­cial moment: she act­ed oppo­site Corio as her moth­er, and the young actress had to reach a point of sad­ness. ​“She was so gen­uine­ly sad, I got this feel­ing of ​‘we’ve found her!’ It was pro­found,” Pardee recalled. ​“I asked her, ​‘What were you think­ing about?’ She said her guinea pig is about to die. The next day we ten­ta­tive­ly asked about her guinea pig. Frankie said: ​‘My guinea pig died, but it’s ok, my mum brought me a chip sup­per. So I’m fine… let’s act!’”