The Business: Casting Directors Dixie Chassay & Rose Wicksteed

A remote Zoom conversation with Casting Directors Dixie Chassay and Rose Wicksteed. This conversation will be comprised of a mini career retrospective and a discussion of their latest project THE GREAT.

THE GREAT is a satirical, comedic drama about the rise of Catherine the Great from outsider to the longest reigning female ruler in Russia’s history. Season One is a fictionalized, fun and anachronistic story of an idealistic, romantic young girl, who arrives in Russia for an arranged marriage to the mercurial Emperor Peter. Hoping for love and sunshine, she finds instead a dangerous, depraved, backward world that she resolves to change. All she has to do is kill her husband, beat the church, baffle the military and get the court onside. A very modern story about the past which encompasses the many roles she played over her lifetime as lover, teacher, ruler, friend, and fighter. Incorporating historical facts occasionally, the series stars Elle Fanning as Catherine, Nicholas Hoult, Phoebe Fox, Adam Godley, Gwilym Lee, Charity Wakefield, Douglas Hodge, Sacha Dhawan, Sebastian de Souza, Bayo Gbadamosi and Belinda Bromilow.

Dixie Chassay – Dixie Chassay started her career in 1994 at NBC’s Saturday Night Live assisting Cast, and the writers room. She assisted such cast as Chris Farley, Adam Sandler and David Spade.

When she returned to London she joined Independent Talent Agency, formerly know as ICM, London, and assisted Two Talent agents, with prolific rosters of acting talent.

Identifying Casting as her primary interest and focus, Dixie went on to train with a UK Casting Director where she worked with writers and directors including Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Edgar Wright, Alfonso Cuaron and Martin McDonagh. She met and worked with Joe Wright who gave her the role of casting the ‘Young Adults and Children’ on his 2007 film, Atonement which led to Saoirse Ronan’s Academy Nomination, aged 11.

Dixie has gone on to work independently with amongst others, David Hare, Tony Gilroy, Jessie Peretz, Joe Wright and Yorgos Lanthimos. In 2018 Dixie won the BIFA for ‘best casting’ for Yorgos Lanthimos’s, THE FAVOURITE, which went on to be nominated for 10 Academy Awards. Last year she cast Tony McNamara’s THE GREAT for Hulu. Dixie continues to work Casting Film and Television and some theatre.

Rose Wicksteed – Rose first started collaborating with actors and creatives at Oxford School of Drama in 1999 where she was taking a foundation course in Acting. Following her love of this world, she went on to study Modern Drama Studies at University and took plays to the Edinburgh Festival as producer and director. After graduating, she spent the next couple of years working in factual and reality TV as a runner & researcher.

An opportunity working on an ITV show about regressing celebrities back to their past lives, lead Rose to connect with actors again, her role – to cast actors for the reconstructions. Passionate about working in drama again, she wrote to every Casting Director in the UK. Her first official job in Casting was as a Casting Assistant spending the summer of 2006 auditioning thousands of children in London for a new children’s drama series.This paved out her journey for the next 15 years.

Rose went on to work as a freelance Casting Assistant for Casting Directors: Nina Gold, Lucinda Syson, Elaine Grainger & Jina Jay – for directors incl. Jane Campion, Christopher Nolan, Alfonso Cuarón, Tom Hooper, Robert Zemeckis & Richard Eyre – before setting up as a Casting Director in 2009.

In 2012 she was nominated for an Artios Award (USA) for Outstanding Achievement in Casting for BAFTA award-winning short film ROOM 8 and in 2014 she was named a Screen International Star of Tomorrow.

She cast the BAFTA nominated and BIFA award winning THE SURVIVALIST; UK Casting on Scorsese’s HUGO; followed by the first two seasons of the Golden Globe nominated and Emmy award winning show GENIUS: EINSTEIN and PICASSO (Ron Howard / Brian Grazer / Imagine / Fox 21 / NatGeo).

Last year she co-cast THE GREAT (Hulu) with Dixie Chassay and covered UK casting on RAY JAMES (Apple) and the final season of HOMELAND (Fox21/Showtime).

Moderated by Rochelle Rose, National Director of Performers Programs, SAG-AFTRA Foundation.