Rebecca Dealy Talks Casting the Teen Boys in “The Plague”
This interview was originally posted on Film Obsessive.
Writer/director Charlie Polinger’s The Plague is a horrifying look at the deep wells of dread that exist in the early teenage years. You can think of it as Lord of the Flies, but at a water polo camp and without the utter barbarism those boys get up to. In order to tell Polinger’s story, casting director Rebecca Dealy needed to find a group of boys capable of handling the weight of Polinger’s story. Dealy has been working for over a decade in the casting industry, and despite self-describing as a “luddite,” has started to embrace the world of TikTok.
“It was my experience with The Plague and casting Kayo Martin that I’ve had to rethink my thoughts on casting through social media. There are so many people making great things, making them for themselves, the way they want to make them in a way that really showcases their own talent or individuality.”
“I’ve started to try to teach myself TikTok. It’s something I can look at depending on what the project is or what the roles are. I will still always go to actors in the traditional way I know first, but I'm open to it. What's cool about Kayo’s case is that his social media is primarily skateboarding, but you saw so much of his personality that it's kind of undeniable. He's already properly performing, even if he's mostly skateboarding in those videos.”
Courtesy of Steven Breckon. An Independent Film Company release.
“What social media captures is the essence of a person. In Kayo’s case, it was honest. Bringing him in to work on the material, it was about, okay, can you translate you and your ability to perform into this narrative where you're not just responsible for yourself and what you're doing, but you're a part of this big ensemble of young people. What does that look like? We did still put him through a traditional process, as we did with all the young actors, to make sure it was a thing they could do over and over for hours a day on set with other kids in the water.”
“Kayo always brought his natural essence, which I think makes Jake so interesting as a character. It's the type of person you're just not sure how they're going to react to something. That's the danger of his character.”
Kayo Martin plays Jake, the popular bully at the all-boys water polo camp. He’s gained a massive social media following on Instagram, and The Plague is his first acting role. Opposite Martin is Everett Blunck as Ben, the new kid at the camp. Jake tells Ben to stay away from Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) because he has the plague. The film explores the ways kids can be cruel and kind in an isolating environment.
Blunck’s name may ring a bell if you saw the under-the-radar Griffin in Summer last year. Blunck plays the titular Griffin, who is the complete opposite of Ben. Griffin is self-assured, an over-confident theater kid, while Ben would probably disappear into thin air if he had the ability to do so. How does a casting director like Dealy sense when a young person is able to play characters at opposite ends of the spectrum?
“Specifically with young people, there's something in their focus and their ability to hold attention. Literally hold the space. That’s something you can train to do, and lots of people train to do it, but at this age, when there's not a lot of training, it either comes naturally or it doesn't. It's that, mixed with the confidence to share their own vulnerability, which is another thing that's hard at any age, but also at that young of an age. To know what to share and what not to. You can't direct that into anybody.”
“In Everett's case, that role also had to withhold a lot because a lot of his story is an internal experience. We needed the actor to be able to handle that. To sometimes hold onto it, sometimes share it, and know how to navigate that for himself.”
One of the most inexplicable parts of filmmaking is the chemistry. A movie lives and dies by the dynamic among its characters. Whether there it’s a flame of passion or hatred, it’s the chemistry that sells it. This is a main component of Dealy’s profession. Movies like The Plague, where most of the actors couldn’t meet in person, are a testament to the new Academy Award for Achievement in Casting. When you watch The Plague and see how these wildly different pre-teen boys come together to make a realistic group of fragile friends, then what happens?
Courtesy of Steven Breckon. An Independent Film Company release.
“There were high hopes of getting everybody together at the beginning of the process. By the end, I was like, just go, just get on the plane.”
“Chemistry is a fragile thing. What I had going for me on this one was they were at a camp, so a lot of them were new to each other anyway. As long as everyone was pretty solid in their individuality, I felt we had something. I had an eye on that balance. It had to feel like they were kids from different cities but of the same world, you know? I felt that if I could keep an eye on that, I could trust them to just sort of mess around as young boys.”
Some people believe chemistry either exists or it doesn’t. In Dealy’s point of view, it’s something that can be developed.
“To think about love in that way, there are some people you meet and it's a thunderbolt. There are some people you meet and they grow on you because you get to know them. The tricky part is having to have enough of it so everyone feels like, okay, this will build.”
“I've seen it happen both ways. I've seen it happen over the course of a film or over the course of a TV show where it really builds into something. Then the story adapts around that. People want that immediate, instantaneous chemistry. For some things you need it, but I also like the build of it. Because we're watching, hopefully, something grow over time with the story as well. So I think that might sometimes work a little bit better. It's just a little bit of a greater leap of faith.”
While the kids make up the majority of The Plague, there is one adult in the mix. Joel Edgerton plays Daddy Wags, the coach of the water polo camp who struggles to keep the boys in line.
“We got very lucky with the extraordinary Joel Edgerton. He read the story and was immediately like, this is incredible, I want to be a part of it, and how do I support Charlie. Which is so rare and is such a testament to who he is as a person, as an actor, and as a filmmaker. He’s directed films and knows what it means to lend himself to Charlie and the film in this way. It’s very rare. I wish more people would be that generous. I understand why they aren't, but we were deeply grateful, not just for his involvement, but for how invested he was in performance and with the kids as well.”
So much of the role of the casting director is in pre-production that when Dealy finally sits down in the cinema, it’s a euphoric experience.
“I have chills thinking about it. I'm so proud of every single person. That includes every single department head on that film, all the actors, and Charlie. It's a magnificent example of everybody working at the highest level and it all coming together in the right way.”
“Everyone knew how hard the task was from the beginning. Steven knew there was gonna be a lot of water. That was a crazy thing when I read the script. I was like, plus they’re in the water? Could you make this any harder for everybody? But they did, you know? The sound is unbelievable, even with everything being underwater. I’m just blown away by every single part of the film.”
“I'm so proud to have been a part of it. I'm proud to watch these young people grow. We’re getting together now for things, and they're taller and they're different. It's really, really cool to be a part of a film like this.”
Independent Film Company will release The Plague in select theaters December 24, expanding January 2
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