I said in the post about Denise that all great movies have at least one, "you'll never believe how that person got cast" story. I thought how we cast Denise was it, but we have an even bigger one now.
Friday was when we FINALLY got ahold of Denise's agent to book her flight, after not getting our calls returned for three days. Not a good sign. Only after basically threatening the agent do we learn that Denise has some sort of issue where she can't travel until August 4th. She starts shooting July 25th. Exit Denise.
This meant that two days before shooting starts, we are missing our second female lead. This is what I would refer to as an "emergency situation." We got Joseph Middleton on the phone, Sean put a call out to people he knew, Nils and I scoured our files and IMBD--we had to find a hot, smart, funny actress who was available and willing to do the role, on like two days notice. Shit.
Thankfully, we got super lucky. Marika Dominczyk was originally Joseph Middleton's first choice to play Lara. She passed on the role because when he asked her about it we were planning to start shooting on June 1st, and she had a movie shooting then. Well, it turns out that Keri Lynn Pratt is Marika's best friend, and Marika had planned on coming out to visit the set anyway. When we told Keri what happened with Denise, she called Marika, blah blah blah, and by yesterday, Marika was here in Shreveport, ready to start.
I don't know Marika all that well yet, but I have hung out with her enough to have some opinions:
1. She's really fucking hot. Generally speaking I am not a fan of the type of slavic facial structure she has, but sometimes hot is just hot, and she's hot. Wait till you see her in the movie.
2. In real life, she is exactly what I imagined the Lara character to be like: Hot, smart, tons of personality and attitude, but still a sweet girl. Her husband is a lucky dude.
3. Speaking of her husband, she's married to Scott Foley. So many Felicity jokes to make...
4. She passed the Murph test. My dog Murph is an emotional mirror--she loves good people, and won't go near bad people. It's weird how well she reads energy. She saw Marika, trotted right up to her, and acted like they'd known each other for years. Good, good sign.
In fact, she's just like Keri Lynn, in that I almost can't believe she's an actress, because she isn't soulless, a whore, or a bitch. Seriously though--What kind of weird movie is this? Almost every actress I know in LA is an awful, awful person, yet every actress I've met so far on my movie is the complete opposite. Either we got really lucky in casting, or I am hanging out in the wrong places in LA.
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