What’s the difference between a commercial casting director and a theatrical casting director? Casting directors who primarily cast commercials may call themselves commercial casting directors, but there’s nothing barring them from casting theatrical projects as well. Likewise, casting directors who primarily cast theatrical content, such as TV, film, or other longform narrative content, may also cast commercials. A casting director is a casting director is a casting director, but the methods and workflows may vary depending on the type of content that is being cast. In other words, it’s like putting on a different hat. So what are some of the similarities and differences?

One main difference between casting theatrical and commercial projects is the pace. Commercials can move with an extremely fast turn-around, while theatrical projects typically take more time to let the process unfold. A typical commercial will wrap up within a week or two and sometimes even faster. I’ve had a commercial project award late in the day on a Friday, cast the next day, book that night, and shoot on Sunday. That one was more extreme than a typical commercial, but a casting timeline like that is practically unheard of in the theatrical world unless someone falls out at the last minute. (Thank goodness the days of Covid backups are behind us… knock on wood.)

On the theatrical side, a feature film or TV show can last several weeks, or even several months. Because the timelines for those types of projects are much longer in general, the casting director can be creatively involved during development and continue throughout production. As one casting director colleague of mine who has had a long career casting both commercials and feature films put it, casting for a theatrical project is a “long term, intimate creative process and partnership with directors, building their vision over time and being an integral piece of bringing a story from page to screen.” Another distinguished casting director colleague, putting the timeline in a clear perspective, said he might see 75 actors in a day of casting for a commercial and 75 actors in a month of casting for a film.

Here's the timeline exception. (There’s always one, right?) In commercials that call for “real people” instead of actors (yes, of course actors are people, too – I didn’t make up the term), real people casting is required, and those timelines can be (ideally) longer than most commercial casting schedules. This is because the casting director needs extra lead time to conduct research and outreach, and the real people need ample time to reply and potentially arrange an interview around their work schedules. If the scope and budget are large enough on a commercial that calls for real people casting, the timeline may be more like that of a theatrical casting schedule. However, real people casting for commercials and theatrical casting are very different by the simple nature of casting non-actors versus casting actors – completely different processes which we can cover in a later post.

Although we are able to work freely to cast in any medium, certain theatrical projects do require the casting director to be a union member. In the early 2000’s, members of the Casting Society of America (CSA) were allowed to join the Teamsters to unionize, and some projects mandate that the casting director working on the project must be a union member in good standing. Commercials don’t have any requirements like this. The Commercial Casting Directors Association of Los Angeles (CCDA/LA) is not unionized and does not mandate that commercial productions hire its members.

Similar to the way actors can play many different types of roles, casting directors can cast many different types of content, whether commercials, real people, or theatrical. Like acting for different genres, casting different types of content requires an understanding of the medium. The lines between commercial content and other forms of entertainment have become blurred in recent years, and many commercial directors also do features or TV and want the same intimate creative approach but on a condensed commercial timeline. It’s all about finding the right hat that fits.