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Double Emmy nominee Beth Sepko
Austin casting director Beth Sepko got a double dose of good news on Thursday morning: She’s a double Emmy nominee. Sepko was recognized for her work on “Friday Night Lights” and the HBO movie “Temple Grandin.”
“That’s just my job,” she said in a 2009 American-Statesman interview, “to know the talent in the area and also know what they are capable of.”
Beth Sepko waits for me on the patio at Jo’s Hot Coffee on South Congress Avenue. The first thing I notice is the dog: a Chihuahua, cradled in her mistress’ arms and wearing a string of pearls.
Uh-oh. Paris Hilton accessorizes with a Chihuahua.
Was the Austin casting director a diva? After all, she does hobnob with celebrities and famous directors. She is a star-maker, plucking actors out of relative obscurity and thrusting them into the national spotlight. Perhaps she’d become drunk with power. Or maybe she would be bitter and jaded by all the glitz and glamour - the constant ego stroking and placating a career in show biz must demand.
But, no ” it turns out that Sepko is nothing so much as a self-described “little Texas girl” whose keen insight, commitment to and love of her career has led to three Emmy nominations (and one win) for her work on NBC’s “Friday Night Lights.”
Behind Roxanne (the Chihuahua), Sepko sports her power-broker office attire: a Clash T-shirt. Perhaps, after years of a job that requires her to quickly categorize and file away performers for future use, she’s afraid of being summed up herself. That might be why she’s quick to reveal that she actually saw the band, years ago at the Majestic in San Antonio (Sepko was born in Austin, but raised farther down Interstate 35). “It’s not like it was the ‘London Calling’ tour or anything, but I saw the Clash, dammit!” she tells me. The shirt’s sleeves are torn off - victims of the ’80s, though no leg warmers are in sight - and at some point she “bedazzled it,” she says, with sequins and shiny things. But one gets the feeling that this is about as glitzy as Sepko gets.
The energetic Sepko (one immediately gets the impression that the last thing she needs is anything caffeinated, but when on SoCo “) is too busy to craft an image anyhow. She still has three or four speaking roles to cast for Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete,” already in its third week of shooting, and she’s in the midst of casting new roles on “Friday Night Lights,” which is experiencing a large cast turnover this season. She’s already thinking about her next gig, an independent film called “The Legend of Hell’s Gate: An American Conspiracy.”
“So, yeah,” she smiles, “I’m juggling a couple of different things.”
Sepko’s trips to the Emmys might have taken a different path.
“I think when I was really little I had delusions of being an actress,” she says. She recalls going to the movies and being especially interested in the credits, even though she didn’t recognize those people’s names or what their occupations meant. She always thought that one day her name would be up there on the screen. Early on, she realized she’d rather be on the other side of the camera. After she graduated from high school, her second cousin, a screenwriter, offered her shelter on the West Coast, but was equally as generous with his frank assessment of the industry.
“I don’t know if my mother paid him to scare me, but he did and so I decided not to go,” Sepko says.
Instead, she wound up working as a talent agent in San Antonio. Fade and flash forward six years to 1993, when Sepko became an assistant to a casting director doing mostly commercials. Her work casting extras for television led to feature films such as “The Big Green,” and that, in turn, led to the largely improvised Christopher Guest comedy, “Waiting for Guffman.”
“(That) was really sort of the first one where I was really on my own,” she remembers. “I was flying by the seat of my pants and didn’t want anyone to know. I mean we had no script! So it was a crazy place to start. So then I was hooked, you know? That’s what I was going to do.”
Sepko collaborates with casting directors in Los Angeles or New York whose productions are filming here. As a location casting director, Sepko’s greatest asset is her encyclopedic knowledge about the talent available in Central Texas. “That’s just my job,” she says, “to know the talent in the area and also know what they are capable of.”
Because she feels the local talent pool is “very strong, but shallow,” another part of her job is to seek out and cultivate new talent.
“Sometimes we get a really great actor and then they leave,” she explains. “And so I’m having to look for someone to replace that go-to guy that I would always cast in a particular role, you know. If he’s gone I have to be ready. So, I am constantly reading new people and making sure that I know who’s out there.”
Sepko sees a lot of local theater productions and seeks out student showcases. She goes to concerts (post-interview she was headed out to see Pat Benatar and Blondie) and judges the Funniest Person in Austin contest. “I’m always trying to turn comedians into actors or musicians into actors,” she laughs, recounting the time she cast Dale Watson in an independent film.
I’m beginning to feel as if Sepko’s always on the prowl - that it’s difficult for her to power down and flip off the casting switch.
“Yesterday, I was driving to the Reel Women meeting over on the East Side,” recounts Sepko, who sits on the organization’s board. “And I’m driving down Seventh Street and there’s this little, old Hispanic woman with white, white hair and dark brown skin and she must be 90, watering her lawn. And I just found myself, out loud, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s beautiful!’ “
Sepko realized the woman probably wasn’t an actress, but she couldn’t help picturing her in “Machete.”
“Robert needs to have her watering the lawn in the background of a scene in the neighborhood,” she thought. “She was awesome! So I do that all the time.” She’s also accosted by just about anyone who’s aware of her occupation. She talks about a trainer at the gym who volunteered for a coach’s role on “Friday Night Lights.” And although she hasn’t used that person, Sepko’s not averse to the idea.
“If we’re looking for a reporter for the show, there is a certain cadence in the way a reporter speaks that I assume they learned in broadcast journalism school, and it’s hard for some actors to copy,” she explains. “And I end up calling local reporters to play reporters.” And cops to play cops, and so on. It’s all part of expanding the talent pool. Sepko says she’s happy in Austin and, in spite of her success, has no desire to go to L.A. Except for the Emmys. Again. After winning two years ago and then losing last year to “Damages” (“We really thought we were going to be beat by ‘Mad Men,’ so we were surprised”) she’s hoping for another victory. “I have the purdy statue from the first season, and she wants a partner on the shelf,” she wrote in our initial e-mail exchange. Even if her statue gets that mate, it would be hard to match the surreal thrill of her first Emmy experience. Sepko arrived in Los Angeles and met that city’s “Friday Night Lights” casting directors - including John Brace - with whom she had worked over the wires for so long. They told Sepko she would meet their significant others, both of them actors, at the ceremony.
“So, I’m sitting there the next night,” she recalls, “and John Brace’s significant other is Gedde Watanabe. I’m sitting there and we’re like, ‘We’re with Long Duk Dong!’ (Watanabe’s iconic “Sixteen Candles” character). At the Emmys! How did this happen? I mean, that was the best part!”
Nope. This little Texas girl’s not jaded at all.
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