Much has been made of the all-star young cast of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, most of whom were on the verge of breaking out when they were cast as part of the Manson family cult. In a new piece for Vulture, casting director Victoria Thomas tells the tale of assembling an ensemble of future Oscar nominees and next-gen It Girls: Austin Butler, Mikey Madison, Margaret Qualley, Sydney Sweeney, Maya Hawke, and Victoria Pedretti. There are some juicy tidbits, too, like how reigning Best Actress Madison was supposed to play the Pussycat role, which was at one point combined with the character of Sadie. Conflicts with her show Better Things almost pushed her out of the film entirely, but the team was able to arrange things so that she could take the smaller Sadie role.
Pussycat ended up being played by Margaret Qualley, who wasn’t even in the mix at first because director Quentin Tarantino hadn’t caught up with watching all the audition tapes. The rest is literally film history—but Once Upon A Time… has some intriguing “what ifs,” as well. Thomas says “Everybody wanted to come in on this,” and she met basically every young up-and-comer in the process (You‘s Madeline Brewer and The Act’s Joey King both got to the callbacks stage, for example.). “We met Billie Eilish,” Thomas shares. “She was 16. Her mom brought her in. She was really shy—cool, nervous. I think she felt a little awkward about it. She was mainly into her music by then.” Though Eilish ended up submitting a self tape, she wasn’t cast—her flower-child look would later be put to use as a cult leader on the show Swarm. She would also go on to win a couple Oscars, albeit as a musician and not an actor.
There are plenty of other fun facts in the piece, including a bit about the “extra credit” that some of the actors reading for the Manson girls brought to the process. “You could do an improv, you could sing a song, you could read a poem—just some other thing that was your interpretation of the character,” Thomas explains. Mikey Madison brought a painting with a poem written on the back and a lock of her hair; Sydney Sweeney did a monologue as Lulu (Victoria Pedretti ultimately played Lulu, while Sweeney played Snake); and Margaret Qualley sang “I’ll Never Say Never to Always,” a song written by Charles Manson that plays in the movie. That’s what it takes to become the Next Big Thing! You can read the full piece here.
