Casting agent Jan Russ reveals the secrets behind Neighbours’ casting success
She cast Kylie Minogue in the role that kicked off her career and knew as soon as she met Margot Robbie she was going to be a star. As casting director for Neighbours for 24 years, Jan Russ reveals the secrets to her casting success.
Fiona Byrne
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As casting director for Neighbours for 24 years Jan Russ gave early career opportunities to some of the Australian acting industry’s biggest names.
Russ’s aim to find and promote new talent helped Neighbours become a training ground and launching pad for stars such as Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Guy Pearce, Natalie Imbruglia, Daniel Macpherson, Delta Goodrem and Margot Robbie.
She had an incredible eye for spotting talent and today, while still teaching acting and mentoring, she is also having a taste of fame on TV in South Korea.
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FB: Thank you for your time. How did you get the job as Neighbours casting director?
JR: I was working at Crawford Productions at the time as a casting assistant to Bunney Brooke and before that I was working in New Zealand as a performer and artist. I had been at Crawfords for about 18 months when I got a phone call from the associate producer at Prisoner who asked if I would like to go for lunch. The lunch was with the producer at the time of Prisoner called Lex Van Os and he offered me the job of the casting director at Grundy Television for Prisoner which I accepted. While working on Prisoner Reg Watson (Head of Drama for Grundy Television) called and said “we are working on a new show, I am going to send some scripts to you, can you start making a list of some actors we need to look at.” That was Neighbours.
FB: Did you think you had a hit on your hands?
JR: Well, what I remember initially is that it was not called Neighbours. It was called Living Together, that was working title on the scripts that I had.
FB: Right from the get-go Neighbours was never been about casting established “stars”.
JR: I was very happy with the cast we assembled. We had a lovely mix of people such as Stefan Dennis, Anne Haddy, David Clencie, Darius Perkins, Dasha Blahova, Paul Keane, Francis Bell and Elaine Smith. The premise I worked from was that I really wanted to get people who had experience but weren’t well known. And I was also looking for new faces and up and coming talent. I was tired of seeing well known faces (on shows) because my belief is the audience see that well known face and go: ‘Oh there is so and so’ and it makes it harder for them to get caught up in character.
FB: Neighbours launched on Channel 7 in 1985 and lasted a year before getting the chop and being picked up by Channel 10 in 1986.
JR: The show had a pretty good following even when it was axed. When we finished at Channel 7 a lot of the fans stood outside 7 with black armbands and red carnations. Then the show moved to 10 and we did change things up a little bit, including some recasting. That was when Jason Donovan took over the role of Scott Robinson from Darius Perkins. Even the sets changed. Channel 10 was initially going to get the old sets from 7 but they had been burnt.
FB: Did you realise you had found someone special when you cast Kylie Minogue as Charlene Mitchell in 1986?
JR: Kylie had only just finished school when she came in to audition and had recently done The Henderson Kids. I did not know she would become as big as she has, of course, but when I looked at her I knew she had something. Sometimes you see people in real life and then you look at them on the monitor and you go: “Oh my God, there is something extraordinary there”. It does not happen all the time, in fact very rarely it happened, but when it does, you know; you know you have got something here. It was the same with Margot (Robbie).
FB: What stood out about Margot Robbie?
JR: Margot had already done The Elephant Princess when I got a call from her agent who asked if I would like to meet her. I can remember sitting in my office and seeing Margot walking towards me and going: “Oh my goodness, who is this?”. At the time I was looking to cast someone in that 17-year-old age group and she was perfect for the role.
Margot was not one of those who would go to the opening of an envelope. She was always very focused and always concentrating on her work. She was not concentrating on lots of other things like a lot of them do. You knew that she was very together and she knew what she was going to do and where she was going to go. She was totally professional and totally focused. She was passionate about her work and passionate about her craft and she wanted to learn. She listened and she observed and took everything on board, which is what Kylie was like. They were both very intelligent young women. They have beauty and brains and it is a wonderful combination if you can get it. But they worked very hard and they were passionate about their craft.
FB: You cast Hugh Jackman on Neighbours, but he never made it to screen.
JR: Yes, I auditioned him and I thought this guy is really interesting. I had a role that I was looking to cast and offered it to him. It was a two-year contract and he said yes. From memory it was a week before he was due to start and he rang me and said he had been offered a place at WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) and it was something he always wanted to do and could he be let out of the contract. I understood where he was coming from and we cast someone else. He was delightful. I guess he is the one that got away. I would have loved to have had him on the show.
FB: Russell Crowe had a short stint on the show.
JR: Russell was doing The Rocky Horror Show at The Princess Theatre at the time (1987). I went and saw the show and met him after for a drink and then asked him in to audition. I just knew I had to get him into the show because he was amazing, exceptional, but he could only do a short stint, about six weeks, because he had to go off with the theatre production when it moved states. I said to the producer: “We have to create a role for him, he is exceptional”. And we did.
FB: You also brought the three Hemsworth brothers, Luke, Chris and Liam, to Ramsay St.
JR: Chris was in Neighbours before he when into Home and Away. He was not in for that long. He played a footballer character. I wanted to keep him on and argued with the powers that be, saying we have to keep this guy on because he is going to be great. They did not have a storyline for him so they let him go and Home and Away very quickly picked him up.
Luke was on the show before him. Liam came in with his mum, Leonie, and auditioned. I put Liam into a six or eight week guest role. I remember his agent ringing me later and saying Sylvester Stallone is thinking of putting Liam into a movie could you write a letter telling him about Liam’s time on Neighbours. I did that and sent that off. He did not get that movie but the next one he got. He was a lovely young man, like his brothers, and the camera just loved him.
FB: What about Guy Pearce?
JR: He was a very together young man. I used to call him the dark horse. He was very quiet but once again very focused on what he wanted to do.
FB: Daniel Macpherson is another who started their career with Neighbours.
JR: I auditioned him in Sydney and thought “Wow.” Once again I just saw “it.” The problem was there was no role to cast him in, so I went to the producers and said I have got this young actor, we have got to put him in the show because he is something. Eventually they wrote a character for him and three months later I called him up and said I have got a role for you on Neighbours. He was wonderful on the show and such a favourite with the fans.
FB: Delta Goodrem was Ramsay St’s songbird for a while.
JR: Her agent approached the company and said: ‘I have this girl and she has this song and if you would like to have her on the show her character could sing’. I auditioned her and then she joined the show. Once again she was very intelligent. She knew exactly where she was going and what she wanted to do.
FB: Over 24 years how did you keep finding actors with such potential?
JR: I did not sit on my bum and wait for the phone to ring. I needed to know as many actors in Melbourne as possible. I was always going to the theatre and shows. I would go around Australia, I would audition in New Zealand. I was constantly looking.
My favourite saying is networking. You have to be out there amongst it, meeting people, seeing the performances. I also liked doing the auditions personally because it gave me an insight into what the person was like. These days I look around (when I am at shows) and I never see anyone (casting agents).
I still love going to the theatre and seeing new talent. There is amazing talent out there. It is exciting to see, but not enough people use (cast) them.
People say, “we have all these wonderful stars (on TV).” I look at that and think, “no.” We have got people out there who are 10 times better than what they are, but you just keep using the same people over and over again.
FB: Do you think social media is now influencing casting decisions?
JR: Yes. If they (actors) have got social media and they are getting attention, being seen out there, are getting their photos in the paper, are getting likes and hits online, absolutely it is taken into account. But that to me does not show they have got talent. To me, the basic thing is you have to have the talent and you have to have the passion. Yes, you have to look good on screen, but if you have not got the goods to go with it then you are not going to last very long.
FB: What bugs you most about the new generation of actors.
JR: You should never stop learning. You need to keep learning and absorbing. As an actor you have to research. You are constantly observing and listening. It is not about primping and going to every opening. It is like every other career, you have to serve an apprenticeship of sorts and learn your craft if you want to make a success of it. There is a lot of hard work involved in acting. There are of course those lucky few who have great looks and can speak and not fall over furniture. I also have a thing about diction. I think we have become so lazy now the way we dress and everything else and our speech has become very lazy. A lot of the young ones now run all their words together and you can’t work out what they are saying.
FB: Was there a secret of your success as a casting director?
JR: Someone asked me recently how do you put it all together and the best example I can give is that it is a jigsaw puzzle. You just don’t pull names out of the bag because it is not going to work. It is about putting people together, making sure they can work together, making sure they can work off each other, that they look right together. The public has to believe them and they need to draw the public in to their characters and make people care about what is going to happen to them. That was the beauty of Neighbours initially. The show drew the audience in because the characters were so believable and the cast all worked together as a team. I think that is the secret of anything whether it is television, film, theatre, whatever.
FB: Why did you leave FremantleMedia (formerly Grundy Television), where you had been the casting director of Neighbours for 24 years, in 2009?
JR: I did not decide to depart, I was asked to depart. I was just absolutely flabbergasted. It took me a long time to get over it, a long time. I was just blown out of the water.
FB: Do you know why this decision was made?
JR: I don’t know. The word that were used for my leaving the show was that they were “outsourcing.” I was deeply, deeply hurt when that happened. It has taken me a little while but I do look back on my time on the show as a great time. It was a wonderful part of my life. I have had few different careers and I have had some amazing things happen in my life. I also loved casting Prisoner because there were all these strong women that I was working with. My premise always was to find new and exciting talent and that was what kept me going.
JR: Are you still involved in the industry?
FB: I still teach acting. I thoroughly enjoy working with the young ones, inspiring them, and passing on my knowledge and information. I mentor a few people as well. And now and again I go back and do some acting. Two years ago I went back on stage for the first time in many years and did Funny Girl for The Production Company. I have done a couple of commercials and a short film. It is great fun
.
FB: And finally I hear you are bordering on famous in South Korea.
JR: That is my son’s show in South Korea. He (Sam Hammington) has a show called Return of Superman which is very popular. His two sons, my grandsons, William and Bentley, are on it too and I have made a few appearances. I’m known as “Nana” over there.
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