It was one of the funniest lines of the night: “This is freaking insane, and I have one before you, which is also crazy.” Toward the end of her acceptance speech, Cassandra Kulukundis, onstage as the winner of the Oscars’ first casting award ever for her work on Once Battle After Another, shouted out the movie’s director, Paul Thomas Anderson. Her tongue-in-cheek jab spoke to their history as creative partners, and to the fact that Anderson had been nominated 14 times for an Academy Award heading into Sunday night. Those 14 nominations might as well have been shared between them: The two have been working together since Anderson’s first feature, 1996’s Hard Eight. (Anderson would end up winning his first Oscar later that evening, for Best Adapted Screenplay.)
Even the most casual moviegoer can understand the importance of casting directors. The job requires working closely with a film’s director to select the actors who eventually appear on-screen. That means choosing the right performers for the right parts, searching for the kind of chemistry that will enliven a film while sifting through scores of fresh, unheralded talent. Casting directors can make or break an actor’s career—or the success of a film itself.
Yet for much of their history, the Oscars overlooked the profession. Casting directors finally got their own branch within the Academy (the voting body behind the awards) in 2013, but it took until 2024 for the organization to announce a trophy recognizing the job itself. Kulukundis was a worthy recipient among a stacked field of nominees. For One Battle After Another, she built a wide-ranging group of performers, including movie stars playing against type (Leonardo DiCaprio as a washed-up revolutionary), character actors chewing scenery (Benicio del Toro as a conscientious mentor figure), and relatively green newcomers tasked with carrying the story (the first-time film actor Chase Infiniti, as a teenager caught up in the violence her parents started).
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But Kulukundis’s moment onstage wasn’t memorable just for being the first time the Academy has celebrated casting directors. Her speech was remarkably refreshing for its candor: She expressed the frustrations she and her cohorts have felt in being overlooked for years, and hinted at just how much someone like her does in the role—all while winning over the room by acknowledging the sheer thrill of taking home an Oscar.
Like many others who won tonight, Kulukundis began by thanking the Academy. As she did, however, she pointed out not only how long it took for her job to receive an award, but how long it took to be credited at all. “I have to obviously thank the Academy for even adding this category, and for the casting directors that fought tirelessly to make it happen despite everything in their way,” she said. “I dedicate this to you and to the casting directors who never got a chance to get up here, who didn’t even get a chance to get their name on the movie.”
At the same time, she used the spotlight to slyly acknowledge several other behind-the-scenes roles, noting that she knows she’s not everyone’s favorite colleague. “I’m in all of your departments, whether you like me or not,” she said, “whether it’s locations, who really hates me; stunts, production design; art directors—yeah, everyone.” Without going into specifics, Kulukundis made clear that casting directors, along with their teams, can be quietly involved in every step of a film’s making. Their choices affect members of every department, not just those the actors they bring on board.
The Oscars, to their credit, did well by the casting directors they finally honored. The ceremony repurposed a format used in the past for rolling out awards, by having five presenters—each an actor from a film nominated for Best Casting—onstage at once. Infiniti introduced the audience to Kulukundis, pointing out that she owes her career to Kulukundis’s work. “Great casting directors,” Infiniti said, “know how to bring together actors we love with new faces, and make a film feel unexpected and completely original.” That’s true of One Battle After Another—and, as it turned out, of Kulukundis’s personality-packed speech, too.
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