Chatting With John Papsidera, Christopher Nolan’s Go-To Casting Director

A little more than a decade ago, John Papsidera saw a Bruce Springsteen show in Nashville. Papsidera’s visit to Music City confirmed something he had always thought: Middle Tennessee was a great place to put down roots. He and his wife had a house built in College Grove, just a short drive south of Nashville.

Papsidera, who has worked as a casting director for nearly 30 years, splits his time between Middle Tennessee and Los Angeles. His offices are still located in L.A., but unless he’s needed in person for specific aspects of the job — callbacks, final readings, meetings with specific directors — Papsidera spends most of his time around Nashville. 

Before a stint in the restaurant business, he actually started his career as an actor. “I remember leaving [an] audition and going, ‘I don’t have the confidence to let a camera study me.’”

When Papsidera made the move back to the entertainment business, a friend who worked in casting pointed him toward the field. After seven years of balancing casting gigs during the week with restaurant work on the weekend, he was hired as the casting director for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. 

“I thought it was a great blend of not only working with actors and still being able to be creative in that sense, but also a real sense of business, which kind of came easier to me,” says the two-time Emmy winner. 

Now Papsidera has a firm foot in both film (the work of Christopher Nolan, Superman, Twisters) and TV (Wednesday, Westworld, the Taylor Sheridan-verse). And with Best Casting finally a category at the Academy Awards, Papsidera’s work on Nolan’s uber-successful adaptation of The Odyssey could send him to the Oscars in the spring.

Ahead of Papsidera’s appearance at the Nashville Film Festival later this month, the Scene spoke with him about his career and his adopted hometown. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

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Could you tell us about the logistics of being a casting director?

It is a blending of creativity and dramaturgy and business. Casting directors probably work with more department heads, next to the director, than anybody else … so it’s an incredibly interesting vantage point from which to see films come together. We’re usually on preproduction to the time they start shooting. Some films I’m on through shooting, but rarely. Usually by the time they start shooting, we’re done, and I’m off onto something else. 

I read with every actor. Back in the day, I used to read with everybody. Now it’s more and more tapes, but callbacks I certainly do [in person]. And then you start to whittle away. I firmly believe that if you believe in the process, the right person shows up.

What is the process of working with a director like?

My job is to get inside a director’s head and see what they want, and then fulfill those dreams. First, understanding how I view the role, and we discuss whether we see it the same way. It’s a service position. We’re definitely trying to fulfill everybody’s needs. 

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Taking a Tour of Nashville’s Film Industry

From Altman’s ‘Nashville’ to Khouri’s ‘Nashville,’ ‘9-1-1: Nashville’ to ‘Scarpetta,’ does our town have the infrastructure to become Movie City?

Recently, the Nashville area has seen upward movement for its film industry. What do you think the future holds for the city?

It’s such a great city and such a great location for film. I know it’s trying to get its sea legs under it. I’ve certainly heard about it more than I’ve participated. I did do [current Amazon Prime series] Scarpetta, the first season that shot in Nashville, and was glad that they had found that production there, thanks to Nicole [Kidman] by and large. It’d be a great location for other projects to shoot in, and I’d love to see the industry take off in a bigger way in Nashville.

How did your partnership with Christopher Nolan form?

The producers on Austin Powers, the Todd sisters, called me and said, “We have this small film; would you be interested in reading it?” I was like, sure. And they sent over the script to Memento. I had to read it three times because I didn’t know if I had read that page before. I was blown away by the structure of the film, the writing of those characters. So I met with Chris, and it was probably one of the easier casting jobs that I’ve had because Chris didn’t know anybody in the States, really. He honored me with giving me the trust of [bringing in my favorite people], and I did. He made decisions fairly quickly, and it was some of my favorite actors out there, so it was a great experience. Chris and I have worked together ever since, barring Insomnia, which was a kerfuffle at a studio, but he promised me that he would be back. He kept his word. 

I think he wants to know what to expect out of people, and once you find it, I think it’s hard to let go when you find that. I’ve always really valued his loyalty and his trust in me, and I think we’ve done each other a fair job working together.

What was it like casting The Odyssey?

It was a little bit of everything. The idea that we had coming out of Oppenheimer, where we felt it was important to cast actors that were recognizable to pay tribute to those people that they were portraying, because those people were the rock stars of that day, scientists on the cutting edge from around the world coming together to have a common cause. It felt like the stakes just got raised on The Odyssey, in that these people were the superheroes of their time. They’re gods and mythic-sized characters. I think the feeling was they need to be almost mythic-sized actors to fill those shoes and to serve that place in the history of literature, or in the oral tradition of storytelling. … People’s imaginations embraced those characters, and they lived with them in a very personal way. Because of the history of this story, they live in a mythic-sized place in people’s imaginations, so we tried to do service to that with getting the superstars of acting to represent those characters.