nessa007: “And then the wild card was Victoria Pedretti as Nell [Crain]. We looked at a lot of

nessa007:

“And then the wild card was Victoria Pedretti as Nell [Crain]. We looked at a lot of actors for Nell, and we got hundreds of auditions for it, and never really had that moment where we said, “Oh my God, it’s gotta be her.” And then that thing you hear about in Hollywood but you never really see, where we got a self-tape that Victoria had put together. She’d just graduated college. She’s never booked a job. She was brand new. She had an empty resume. I don’t even think she had a current headshot. But she had taped an audition herself and submitted it through her agency, and these tapes come in all the time. They usually land at the bottom of the pile of the casting director. And that tape had done what it’s supposed to do. It had bubbled its way up through all the different assistants, and every step, every person involved at Engine Casting. It made it to my casting director, Annie McCarthy, who I’ve worked with on everything I’ve done. And she called me while we were about to make an offer to another actor. She called me at eleven o’clock at night. And said, “You have to watch this tape. I think this is Nell.” And I said, “This person hasn’t done anything. Are you sure this is the right tape? There’s no resume here.” And that was Victoria. A minute into her self-tape, I knew she was Nell. And that she was a star. I also realised that if we didn’t cast her in this, someone was going to scoop her up very quickly and she would explode. And she has since this.” - Mike Flanagan

THEHAUNTINGOFHILLHOUSE(2018)
Dir. Mike Flanagan