Emmy Nominees In Reality Casting Explain how They Find Talent

EXCLUSIVE: In our third and final roundtable featuring this year’s Emmy nominees for Outstanding Casting, Deadline gathered Jesse Tannenbaum (The Amazing Race, Survivor) Goloka Bolte (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Danielle Gervais (Queer Eye) and Sean Bowman (Love on the Spectrum) to talk about how they separate the “fake” and “performative” applicants from those “authentic” people they want on their shows.

And since budgets don’t always allow their teams to recruit people in person, the casting directors also share a few secrets about where they’ve found potential reality stars (like Postmates) and how they make sure they aren’t dumpster fires in disguise (see: their social media history).

DEADLINE What are you most proud of from your show’s last season? Let’s start with The Amazing Race, Jesse.

JESSE TANNENBAUM: Just being nominated for a show that I’ve been watching since it came out in the early 2000s and being a fan of it … that’s first and foremost. But then also it’s about the contestants, the relationships and the dynamics, and their storytelling ability. It’s a tricky one for The Amazing Race because it’s two people. I think we can all agree it’s hard enough to get one person who checks every box. This cast, in particular, really delivered on the storytelling and overcame a lot while racing.

DEADLINE And Survivor?

JESSE TANNENBAUM: Survivor is a different beast. It’s not based on a relationship, but their individual selves, what they’ve gone through in their lives and what they wanna share on Survivor. For season 48, we had such interesting storytellers like Mitch Guerra, who grew up with a stutter and applied for years. And then there was Eva Erickson, who’s on the spectrum and had that beautiful moment with Joe Hunter. I think really important conversations happen on Survivor that some shows just don’t hit.

DEADLINE Are the mandates still in place in which at least 50 percent of the cast should be persons of color, something CBS topper George Cheeks instituted in 2021?

JESSE TANNENBAUM: Well, from my perspective, nothing’s changed. I’ve always, in the back of my mind, felt we needed more diversity on these shows. It became a mandate for season 41. It’s really beautiful to see the amount of people who apply in our database when they see someone that looks like them on television. So fast forward to now, seasons 51 and 52, which we’re currently casting. The pool of people is insane. I’m still shooting for having a really diverse cast because I think everybody needs to be represented.

GOLOKA BOLTE: How insane is it that we’re talking about seasons 51 and 52? Drag Race is on 17. With Drag Race, I get to work on a show that really resonates with so many people and has such a great message of love and inclusivity that brings hope to a lot of people. That helps create a sense of community. It gets them out of hard times. It helped them have hard conversation with their parents. I feel like I’m part of something that matters. I feel like I’m doing something great.

DANIELLE GERVAIS: This is only season nine of Queer Eye. What’s neat about this season is we took it to Las Vegas. Every season of Queer Eye is typically in a different city, which brings its own challenges. For Vegas, we had to find a showgirl, but we also found a woman who’d been a housekeeper at the Mirage for like 20 years. We’re always trying to tell new stories. It actually gets harder every single season because we’ll look back and say, ‘we told that story.’ But with Vegas, we really brought that storytelling. We also had the addition of [interior designer] Jeremiah Brent. Losing Bobby Berk was really hard for everybody and for the audience, but I think Jeremiah has really rose to the occasion.

SEAN BOWMAN: With Love on the Spectrum, we’re always trying to set up stories along the spectrum from high support needs people to lower support needs people. We’re also casting the matches. It was pretty amazing this season that we had so many love connections. It doesn’t always work out, but this season everyone kind of ended up with somebody, so that was pretty nice.

DEADLINE What’s the reality show talent pool like these days? Are players much savvier today than they were 20 years ago?

SEAN BOWMAN: In general with our show, we find that people are pretty authentic. The number one thing we’re looking for is whether they really want to find love. We haven’t had too many people that just wanna be famous on TV, which has been pretty refreshing. 

GOLOKA BOLTE: People have definitely gotten a lot savvier over the years. People will come in and worry about getting a certain edit. We try to avoid people who are too rehearsed and fake. You want someone who’s gonna come on TV and be their authentic self. We’re looking for those great talkers, those great narrators, those people who can really tell their story without overthinking it, because that’s not fun to watch it all. But you definitely get a lot of people who think they know everything about the industry and they’re trying to mold themselves into a character. That tends to not really work. 

DANIELLE GERVAIS: This is the thing about the performative people. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt first because sometimes that can be nerves. And then I’ll usually interview them again to see if they are a little less nervous. If they don’t change, then you know they’re just sort of performative and they’re giving you what they think you wanna hear. For Queer Eye for example, people are like, ‘oh, you know, look at my house! It’s a mess!’ They know the areas that we’re looking for. And if it feels a little too perfect for us, it’s generally a red flag.

JESSE TANNENBAUM: Part of our jobs is to sniff through that, right? To get a feel for who’s being real and who’s not? In our pep talk videos, all of us say we’re looking for authenticity. I feel like anyone who watches that cringes. I think people are really starting to understand what that means. Another thing that I wanted to implement when took over Survivor and Amazing Race was getting really close with these contestants … not just putting ’em through the motions of the casting process, like, ‘okay, we got their tape.’ Let’s put them through casting finals and move to FaceTime conversations. Every update is through a FaceTime conversation and we catch ’em at different parts of the day. Is there consistency in their personality? We can definitely tell.

GOLOKA BOLTE: A lot of people say, ‘oh, people are just acting on reality TV.’ Like, I don’t know if anyone’s ever seen first time actors try to act. Acting is an art form and very hard and takes a lot of practice. You wouldn’t be able to get the gold that you get from these people if they were acting.

DEADLINE Are you doing anything different today in terms of finding those authentic people?

GOLOKA BOLTE: We’re definitely in a digital age. Our shows used to have these huge budgets and we used to be on the road for weeks at a time with our paper applications and our suitcases and rolling into different cities and scouting and setting up open casting calls. We don’t do that very much anymore, at least not on any of my shows. We’re really using someone’s digital footprint to get ahold of them, from Facebook to Instagram to YouTube and Reddit. We’re doing it without leaving our offices. We find new creative ways to track people down.

SEAN BOWMAN: We create relationships with autism organizations all across the United States, and we use them as our recruiters. We give our casting flyer to them and they spread it wide. Season one took a lot of convincing of people that we were trying to do a good thing with this show. With season four, which we just finished up, people are trusting us a little bit more.

DANIELLE GERVAIS: We’ve always sort of taken a hybrid approach. We definitely have to take advantage of everything digital that we have at our fingertips. But when the budget allows and we push for that Queer Eye, we will send some people on the ground because inevitably there are people we’re just not gonna find on social media, like the housekeeper at the Mirage. So it’s a little bit of both. It’s interesting, I’m hearing more about open calls, not necessarily for Queer Eye, but for other unscripted shows. I’m hearing whispers that that might be become more of the norm, in addition to all the digital stuff.

JESSE TANNENBAUM: We are getting people who are representing all different types of races, religion, and sexual orientation across the US and Canada. We are lucky. We have a lot of applicants that apply. By the time we start, we have an average of 25,000 in the database ready to go through. Granted, a lot of them have apply year after year, but it’s our job to be like, you’re not ready.

DEADLINE Do you still walk up to strangers out in the wild to potentially recruit them?

DANIELLE GERVAIS: No shame. 

JESSE TANNENBAUM: A, B, C. Always be casting. Right? People approach me. It’s weird. It’s like, who am I? But people come up and ask, are you Jesse? I’ve been in Budapest and someone came up to me.

DANIELLE GERVAIS: No one comes up to me. I go up to other people, though.

GOLOKA BOLTE: Yeah, I don’t get that either. My favorite is Postmates, ’cause you get a lot of really fun people delivering Postmates here in L.A. There was this one guy who came in and he had the most amazing look. He was walking down the hall and I told my team, ‘go get him!’ We need him for a show.

DEADLINE How do you feel about the trend of recycling old reality show contestants?

SEAN BOWMAN: I’m all for it. I’m obsessed with Survivor and Drag Race. This is awesome to be part of this panel because y’all make my favorite shows. I will absolutely watch Bob the Drag Queen go head to head with Boston Rob. I’m okay with it in certain situations, but I love the fresh faces, too.

GOLOKA BOLTE: Sometimes I feel like it’s giving less work to casting directors who work really hard and might not get to come back for the next season of their show ’cause they’re doing the all-celebrity thing. It does create less work for people in the industry. So in that sense, I don’t love it. But I also think it’s really fun for the cast members. I love seeing our queens compete on The Traitors and Project Runway, to have all these opportunities. We’re in such a different era of TV. It used to be if you did one show, that was it. Now you can actually make an entire career out of being yourself.

DANIELLE GERVAIS: I feel similar as far as wanting work for casting directors, but I also think it’s a good boost for the unscripted industry. I think it’s bringing a new excitement and potentially new viewers. That’s always a good thing. 

DEADLINE Is there a line that you won’t cross personally in terms of casting an infamous person?

SEAN BOWMAN: I don’t know what it is, but yes, I’ll know it when I see it. 

GOLOKA BOLTE: I think it really depends on what someone is infamous for. If somebody is cruel or a bully or if there is any whiff of racism or bigotry, I’m a hard no on giving that person a bigger platform.

DANIELLE GERVAIS: I have to agree one hundred percent. I definitely have a line. I would definitely push back and try to find somebody better.

JESSE TANNENBAUM: I feel like for the most part, our audience wants good people on our shows, people that they can root for, people who are relatable, people they wanna see win a million dollars.

DEADLINE Do you all worry about opening up TMZ and seeing one of your contestants with a criminal past? Does that kind of fear still permeate your life? 

GOLOKA BOLTE: We try to be as thorough as possible. Everyone who goes on a TV show goes through a pretty rigorous background check. In some cases they’re fingerprinted, there’s medical testing, there’s psychological testing, social media scans, all of that. It does happen occasionally that someone slips through the cracks or there’s something that wasn’t reported and nobody knew about that and it comes out afterwards. It’s definitely a bummer when it happens because it can change the narrative and take away from this incredible group that we put together.

DANIELLE GERVAIS: Social media sweeping is crucial for us because, you know, if you put it on social once it’s there forever. I think we’re even talking about different AI programs to try to catch some of that stuff.

JESSE TANNENBAUM: Is there a picture of them hunting, like illegal big game hunting in Africa where they’re posing next to an elephant? There’s as much vetting as we can do, but like Goloka said, things do slip through the cracks. I don’t live in fear from it because luckily it doesn’t happen that often.

GOLOKA BOLTE: We work with professional companies that do the background checks. We have a list of these really awful keywords and we Google people’s names with all the words. We gotta look them up before we pitch anyone. And it’s terrible because sometimes you’ll meet someone, you’ll fall in love with them because they’re hilarious, they’re so funny. And then you get into their social media history and you’re like, oh, wow. That person has some very frightening opinions and thoughts, and they’ve said some really ugly things. And then we’re back to, do we wanna give this person a larger platform?

SEAN BOWMAN: We definitely do some serious due diligence on Love on the Spectrum. But we joke how the show is the safest place to date, so I would be like very surprised to find out if there was, like what you said, someone on TMZ. But yeah. It could happen.

DEADLINE Is there a reality show that you would prefer not to cast?

JESSE TANNENBAUM: We all wanna work when we need to. So I don’t know if we want to answer that.

GOLOKA BOLTE: I don’t think we have as many shows like this on air anymore, but you remember those ones that were really dark, like with the addictions and people were addicted to eating cotton balls that they would wipe the toilet with? I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna live in that space.

DEADLINE I hear what you’re saying. Can you imagine casting Hoarders?

DANIELLE GERVAIS: I don’t want to work on Hoarders. I love watching Hoarders, though.

DEADLINE How are you feeling about the industry as a whole?

SEAN BOWMAN: I’m hopeful. I love this industry, so I want to keep going in it. We just finished our show last week, so I’m unemployed if anyone’s looking.

GOLOKA BOLTE: It’s been a really interesting couple of years for the unscripted industry. We had the writers strike and I was expecting it to be a big boom in unscripted TV, but it actually ended up being the opposite. Television production as a whole stalled and I went from having five major series to working on one and having a month off in between. We’ve gone through a really tough correction, actually. But I’m definitely feeling bullish. It’s starting to build up. There’s more activity. We’re definitely not getting those super fast green lights to season two while we’re still casting season one, though.

DANIELLE GERVAIS: There are still fewer projects for sure. I’m not seeing a huge investment in development casting for new shows. The green lights trickle in. But I am hopeful. I don’t know that it’ll be the same volume as it was before the writers strike, but I do think the size and the scope of the shows will probably be bigger. We’ll just have fewer of them just because there’s just less buyers out there right now.

JESSE TANNENBAUM: I feel grateful and honored to be constantly working on these amazing shows and keeping as many of my team members employed. There have been moments of sadness when you hear from people who you once worked for and they’re asking, ‘have you heard of anything?’ And are there moments where I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and I get on TikTok like an idiot and doom scroll to find accounts that say the industry is dying and I’m like, ‘well, I need a Xanax.’ That happens all the time. But lately, I’ve been sleeping well.

GOLOKA BOLTE: I know exactly which TikTok you’re watching.