Casting Family Style

One of the questions I get the most is, “How do you cast actors to play yourself or your own family members?” With an ensemble, it’s as much about the balance and chemistry of the group as it is about the strength of the actors as individuals. Putting together a cast of this size is very much like a puzzle— seeing how one face works against another to create either symmetry or contrast.

The first actor we cast was Nora because she’s the lynchpin, the outsider, but the yin to the family’s yang. She needed to feel quintessentially American, while still having a believable connection to China and her grandmother. She needed to be able to express all of this with her face, since Billi isn’t able to speak her mind for much of the movie.

When I saw Nora’s audition tape, I was astonished by how much she embodied all of these things so effortlessly. Her audition showed me that I wasn’t casting “Awkwafina,” but Nora Lum—a woman who was raised by her own Chinese grandmother and who had also studied abroad in Beijing like I did.

When I first started talking to Nora about the role of Billi, I made it clear to her that I wasn’t looking for someone to play me. Billi is not me. She is a character who goes on a journey similar to mine and has the experiences and emotions I had, but she doesn’t need to behave like me or talk like me. Instead of trying to channel myself into my protagonist, I asked my lead to simply bring her own experiences of love, loss, and joy to the character. I took a similar approach in casting the ensemble, not necessarily trying to find visual replications, but looking for a particular essence of each character that was important for the story.