Calcutta girl Tess Joseph, who had found Sunny Pawar to play little Saroo Brierley in Lion that went on to the 2017 Oscars with six nominations, will now be in the powerful Academy voting panel. The casting director has recently received the invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. An alumnus of Loreto House and St Xavier’s College, Tess started her career as a casting director in Calcutta with Mira Nair’s Namesake in 2006. She tells The Telegraph about her profession, recent works, accolades, lockdown days and more…
Getting an invitation from the Academy to be a member…
I remember tweeting on July 1: “I feel like I made the valedictorian list of 2020”. I feel humbled and grateful to be recognised by my peers globally. It’s truly a great honour. The Casting Directors Branch is the one of the newer, youngest branches at the Academy, so it’s great to be a part of it.
Life after Lion…
It’s been busy days for me and my team! After Lion, we worked for Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin. Then we cast Netflix’s biggest success of the year, Extraction. Yeh Ballet by Sooni Taraporevala was also very special with a young new cast at the helm. We have Ramin Bahrani’s The White Tiger coming up, which is based on Aravind Adiga’s book. We cast Apple TV+’s Shantaram and we have also been part of the casting team for Foundation, a science fiction series for Apple TV +, and the Amazon series The Wheel of Time.
The journey from a Loreto House girl to an Academy member…
I would say it’s been a serendipitous and ever-changing journey. Loreto House is in many ways the foundation of who I am as a person. Among scores of uniformed girls, I do believe, I found my voice at Loreto House. I discovered who I am, what I love doing, how to communicate that well. I had picked up most of the awards for extracurricular activities. My schooling exposed me to literature, musicals and movies as my family cemented my love for the art. Loreto also helped me discover the “rebel” in me, from debates to breaking the rules. I feel that’s an integral part of schooling. Everything that I loved as a “hobby” plays a role in what I do today, probably that’s why I love what I do as “work”. Nothing goes to waste. Whatever you discover and explore will connect to your future in ways you can only understand when you look back!
When I was growing up, TV, films, media, these were careers no one spoke of. Like many others, I too wanted to be a doctor. My Ma pushed me to give the entrance examination for mass communication which had just started as a graduation course at St. Xavier’s College. The course was supposed to be my stop gap while I prepped for medicals. Once I joined, there was no turning back. Serendipity has always played a role in my choices.
Memories from school days…
I wasn’t a very good student till Class V. Then I realised that if you are good at your studies, you can get away with a lot of things. I was talkative and often got into trouble in class. The Famous Five and The Secret Seven were my favourite books and I used to go to places in the school where we were not allowed to go. So it was like we were living the books we were reading. However, my most favourite school memory till date is when I was in Class IX, there were three certificates for the top three students of the class — one is for excellence, one is for doing well and the other is for best improvement. So one day I stood up in the class and asked my class teacher, who was also our math teacher, as to why the girl who came third got the most improvement certificate and why the girl who worked the hardest won’t get it. For example, if a girl who was failing got 60 per cent, she should get the best improvement certificate. On the basis of that beautiful discussion, our school decided to change the certificate that year and one of my close friends got that. My school taught me to stand up and express myself. It allowed me to do what I believe in. I was in love with music, dance and basketball. I played district-level basketball, performed in several inter-school fests in Calcutta and also won the best performer in the Eastern region award once.
Missing Calcutta...
I always miss Calcutta. Though I’m settled in Mumbai now, Calcutta is my home, comfort, familiarity, and “reset” button. My parents are in Calcutta and they, along with the city, have shaped me in so many ways. I feel blessed that I grew up in Calcutta where art was treated with respect, always encouraged and celebrated. I do feel if I had grown up anywhere else, I would be a different person today. My baba was a Cine Central member and always saw film as an art form. My brother and I were reading subtitles once we knew how to read! From Bicycle Thieves to Chaplin, musicals to horror and documentaries, baba encouraged us to watch everything and we would end our film festival days with dinner at New Cathay or rolls from Badshah! I was more of an auditory learner than reader and my father gave lyrics the same standing as poetry. I was always encouraged to listen and remember Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Hasrat Jaipuri.
Choosing to become a casting director...
Even today if you ask my parents or friends how I relate or remember cinema, books or stories, they will tell you that I’m constantly in love and raving about characters and performances and now, I get to make those memorable performances happen. As a casting director, my team and I bring to life the one living and breathing aspect of all cinemas — the actors! It’s often daunting because I get to be the first person to show the director what his/her film could potentially feel and sound like. I love watching and fine-tuning performances, discovering and elevating talent and now I get to do that all day!
My job is to collaborate with producers, directors, networks and studio executives to cast the best talent for each part. We need to be the biggest supporters of actors. We want actors to succeed, and often the perception can be the opposite, but the truth is, if life were perfect, the right actor would be the first actor walking into our rooms for the audition!
Beating lockdown blues...
Generally I don’t approach things I cannot control with panic. My fears were mostly heightened for my parents, senior family members, friends’ parents and those I knew who were stuck in other countries. Of course I first treated it as a break, which I desperately needed because we had been working non-stop for six months. After a couple of days off, I found a routine very quickly that has been integral to my lockdown days and beating the blues! I have been learning during the lockdown and I’ve been writing and listing them as I discovered each one. They are:
Stay close, while in distance: The pandemic doesn’t dictate your relationships, so remember to stay close always and remember the distance just shows you care, be it 6ft apart or choosing not to travel home, you’re doing it to safeguard the people you love and yourself.
The extra hours mash-up: I had a little cube or dice which I wrote things on to decide what to do with my extra hours. The cube had things like meditate, binge watch, read that book, course/workshop, write, go walk etc. If I ever felt the “I’m bored” or the “I’m not feeling inspired” coming on, I’d roll it!
Remote working is an option, not a reactive solution: We never treated Zoom like a sad solution to casting, instead we adapted fast and moved our casting online, constantly pushing and learning to make the process better and more intimate for actors.
Listen and notice: This time has shown me a thousand things, from epic sunsets, silence, greed, claustrophobia, kindness to the crack of an egg as I relearnt to cook, fold, clean and even talk to myself. I’ve seen a myriad of things — empty roads, a nation coming together to show gratitude to essential workers, watched migrants left to walk home, I’ve also been the person feeding stray dogs in the afternoon sun and answered appeals from friends reminding me to donate, to help and to share. More than anything, I’ve learnt that progress is an elastic word, sometimes it meant just getting through a day, finishing chores and cooking to the efficiency of 10-hour work days — both are progress.
Be relevant: Be relevant by contributing your time, your learnings. I’ve been mindful of what I’ve shared on social media to how we help others cope at a time which might be very different and difficult for them. From learning sessions to workshops to helping people discover their stories and voices, I’m glad I could use this time to be relevant to make someone’s day better.
Looking forward to the post-pandemic world...
I miss my friends and family, I miss hugs, I miss that feeling of shared energy in a room, of shared laughter in a room and the shared experience of watching a movie with strangers. I just want to rediscover a sense of trust that allows me to experience all these simple things without questioning my health and safety while doing so.
