Sight for the day: Stars in His Eyes – #AlexOloughlin

“Cast him. He’s a TV star.”

– Les Moonves

(Chief Executive Officer of CBS Corporation)

  When he saw Alex’s screentest for Moonlight

The comment above, is from an article: Emmy Contender Casting Directors On Biggest Actor Mistakes, Diversity In Casting, And Their Hardest Roles To Cast – By Matthew Grobar (11 June 2016)

Question: Which has been the hardest part to cast in your career, and why?

Barbara Fiorentino: One of the toughest roles that I had to cast—it was getting the actor that we wanted cast—would have been Alex O’Loughlin in his first series regular role on a show called Moonlight for CBS, in the role of Mick St. John. It was only on for one year, but he was an unknown from Australia. It was incredibly challenging to get the studio and network to sign off on him. It went all the way up the ranks to Les Moonves, who, I’m told, when he saw his screen test, within fifteen seconds said, “Cast him. He’s a TV star.”