Mr. Zeitlin found Ms. Wallis through the grueling process of auditioning more than 3,000 candidates over a nine-month period.
Jennifer Euston, the show's casting director, had, by then, auditioned more than 100 actresses for various parts on the show.
Mr. Marshall quietly auditioned more than a dozen major actresses before settling on Renée Zellweger but refuses to name the others.
Mr. Lukow auditioned more than 200 girls last fall and after a second round of callbacks, he had his cast of five.
The assistant directors auditioned more than 1,000 rural schoolchildren before they chose Yan Xin-Rou and Cai Pei-Han to play the sisters.
"It's a wonderful show, but it's like a little buried treasure because it's been in the shadow of the Barbra Streisand phenomenon," says the director, Robert Johanson, who auditioned more than 300 actresses before choosing Ms. Kritzer.
Last Saturday, Gen Art and representatives from Elle magazine and p.45, another local boutique, auditioned more than 100 aspiring designers for "Project Runway," a reality series with Heidi Klum as a host, to be shown in the fall on the Bravo network.
In October the studio held an open casting call in New York, auditioning more than 100 men to find the right personality to play the 6-foot-3, 300-pound Smalls, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles in 1997.
After surviving the auditions (more than 70 sought roles), Linda Behrle-Correll, Rollin Gardner, Frank Martin, Larry Kadish and Rob Kopil have grown into such a tight, close-knit family as to give the impression that a game of Monopoly might break out right after the spare ribs and fried rice were cleared from their table.
I'm always game to hear about the actor's story of endless auditions, rejection, years of bartending or waitressing, more auditions, more rejection and then -- the PART.
