The Art of Casting: The Craft Behind the New Oscar

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With the Academy Awards now honoring Casting, step inside the creative process of choosing the faces you fall in love with on screen. Discover how chemistry sparks, stars are born, and unforgettable ensembles come to life during this conversation moderated by Carole Horst, the Deputy Editor, Features, at Variety. Panelists include Barry Jenkins, Academy Award-winning director of Moonlight, Lulu Wang, director of The Farewell, and casting directors Kerry Barden (American Psycho, Dallas Buyers Club, Spotlight) and David Rubin (The Talented Mr. Ripley, Romeo + Juliet, Men in Black).

Carole Horst has been with Variety since 1991, starting as a copy editor and working up through the ranks, seeing the evolution of show business and how it's covered. She has helped establish and edit print dailies for Variety at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, and Venice festivals, as well as other entertainment business markets, and still thrills at discovering films and talent on the big screen. She lives in Valencia, Ca, with her animation professor husband and loves her two incredible daughters, her alma mater Penn State, and the Philadelphia Eagles.

Barry Jenkins is the director of the Best Picture winner Moonlight, a film widely considered one of the most important works of 21st-century American cinema and ranked No. 5 on The New York Times’ list of the century’s 100 best films. He also directed the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee, If Beale Street Could Talk, based on the James Baldwin novel, and other acclaimed films like Disney's Mufasa: The Lion King, which was one of the highest-grossing films of 2024. In television, he created and directed the limited series The Underground Railroad, based on the novel by Colton Whitehead, which earned seven Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Directing for Jenkins, and won both the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Limited Series and the Golden Globe for Best Limited Series. As he continues to build a body of work characterized by empathic, character-driven stories, Jenkins is currently working on several new projects, including The Natural Order, a sci-fi thriller for Universal Pictures starring Glen Powell, and Be My Baby, an A24 biopic starring Zendaya as Ronnie Spector.

Lulu Wang is the director of The Farewell, for which she received the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film. The film was also named one of the top ten films of 2019 by the American Film Institute. Her most recent project was in television: Expats, which stars Nicole Kidman and is based on the novel The Expatriates by Janice YK Lee. Her upcoming, highly anticipated projects include Audition, based on the Katie Kitamura's novel, and an untitled film based on Hirokazu Kore-eda's novel Like Father, Like Son. Wang and Barry Jenkins have been married since 2024. 

Kerry Barden is a native of Atlanta. He majored in theatre at the University of Georgia and has cast over 300 films, including Boys Don’t Cry, American Psycho, The House of Mirth, The Help, the Pitch Perfect  franchise, Dallas Buyers Club, Spotlight, and four films for director John Waters. His series credits include Sex and the City, Hand of God, Good Girls Revolt, School Spirits, and 13 Reasons Why.  As a producer, his credits include the award-winning Conversations with Other Women, starring Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter. Kerry is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The British Film and Television Academy, and The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.