There’s a lot to consider when thinking about how your screenplay will be received by a reader. A producer may consider budget, a director might think about how the script translates visually and a screenwriting competition judge will most likely be looking to see if the writer’s voice stands out. But what does a casting director look for? Knowing that getting the right actor in the lead role can make or break your movie, we sat down with casting director David Guglielmo CSA, to find out how to make an impact on the person who could be most critical to getting that greenlight. 

Guglielmo started his career in film as a writer and director. His third feature film as a director, Love Bomb (written by Kathy Charles), is about a mysterious dating app that brings three strangers together with deadly consequences and comes out later this fall. As talented as Guglielmo is as a director, he discovered the joy of casting films when Matt Lessall, the casting director of his first film, No Way to Live, asked him if he wanted to be a casting assistant. 

“When my movie wrapped, I was working at a juice bar so it was amazing that he asked me. I had no experience in casting, but we had similar sensibilities. I learned everything I know from Matt, and he was really a great mentor. We did about twenty-something movies together.” 

After learning the ropes, Guglielmo realized how rewarding the business of casting could be so he started his own company. “I realized that I love this job. I think it's the perfect way to have a job in the industry,” he says. He now has over 50 film credits as a casting director including Suitable Flesh, starring Heather Graham, and The Last Stop in Yuma County starring Jim Cummings. Needless to say, Guglielmo has read a ton of scripts and was kind enough to share what he looks for when he’s reading them. 

Authenticity

The first thing Guglielmo looks for in the writing is authenticity. “I want to see the

authentic place where the vision is coming from,” he says. He loves to read scripts written by actors because they know how to thoroughly inhabit a character and understand character motivations. “I always think actors make great writers. And I think writers basically are actors because you're being those characters, all of them, while you're writing, and you're traveling in all those emotions,” he says. 

He goes on to say that anyone reading the script can only feel the emotions within a character if the writer authentically felt them, too. He doesn’t think that doing a polish on a script can increase authenticity because it will feel forced. Instead, the writing experience needs to be deeply emotional. “You need to feel the emotions while you're writing it. You're going to cry. And I have cried when I was writing, and I felt anger – all these emotions. That's what's going to translate.”

Read More: Writer-director Sydney Freeland breaks down the authenticity of ‘Reservation Dogs’

Avoid a Fixed Mindset When You’re Writing

Most writers create an outline or beat sheet before they sit down to write their script, but Guglielmo urges writers not to follow it too strictly. He says that if you keep an open mind, you may discover new possibilities along the way.

“You might think, ‘Okay, this is where I need to go. This character goes from A to B, and then we're going to end the movie this way. But you need to be in the moment because a character might need to go completely in the other direction. A character might die that you think is the hero. You have to allow that, and you have to trust that. You have to say, ‘I'm going to go where these characters are taking me. I'm going to go where the story is naturally unfolding, not where I thought it was going to go.’ I’m passionate about that type of trust and tapping into what the story needs to be, instead of what you want it to be,” he says.

Adding Diversity to Your Scripts

There’s been a trend in Hollywood over the last few years to make the characters we see on screen more diverse. Representation of people of color, LGBTQ+, and disabled people reached new highs last year, drawing in a wider audience. According to the Hollywood Diversity Report 2024, “In 2023, theatrical films with casts that were from 31% to 40% BIPOC enjoyed the highest median global box office receipts, while films with casts that were less than 11% BIPOC were the poorest performers.” 

The takeaway is that more diversity means bigger box office. So why not build a rich array of characters into your script? Guglielmo says go for it. 

“If you're curious about the world, if you're going out there and seeing all different backgrounds, socioeconomics, race, and gender, the more that’s going to work its way into the stories you want to tell,” he says. 

He says even if you wrote a character as white, a man or woman, or whatever the case may be, ask yourself if it needs to be that way. Guglielmo says that when he’s casting a film, he asks himself, “Can we open it up, and does it affect the story? Does it help? I made a movie called The Standoff at Sparrow Creek and that's a movie that was hard to bring diversity to because the characters just seemed like they would all be of a certain type. But on other movies, there’s no reason why every single role can't be open ethnicity. Let's open it up and see who the best actor is. And there's so much talent out there that it ends up being very diverse.” 

While casting is an important part of filmmaking, getting your script to a place that feels authentic, where your characters have their own agency is just as important – and if you can remain open-minded during casting, all the better. 

Read More: Paul Angunawela on Diversity and Final Draft