ROSE

I won’t skip over myself in my retelling of our casting process for “Strange Kindness” despite the fact it’s me writing this or that I’m the producer or that the casting “process” for ROSE looked pretty different than the other main characters. 

The best part about talking about my experience being cast as ROSE is that I was cast as ROSE and she didn’t come to me self-appointed. 

She came to me in 2019. 

Joseph and his producing partner were getting ready to come to the Cape to film the 14 page short film version of “Strange Kindness”. Every conversation we had was about filming and I was helping out wherever I could, which, at that point, was coordinating costumes and props and handling the flow for set dressing and meals and transportation. What I was waiting for, and I was waiting, I’m not afraid of saying that, was for Joseph to ask me to play ROSE. It seemed like he was asking me for help in every other way except for the area in which I was most interested: playing ROSE. 

At the time, I wasn’t much more self advocating and I figured there was a reason he hadn’t asked, so assuming the worst, I kept doing the other things I had taken over. 

Then the producer asked him one day (this is how he retold the story), “Isn’t your girlfriend an actor? Should she play ROSE?” And apparently that was the push that Joseph needed to ask me to audition. So they invited me into the office to audition, and then Joseph and I went to an Easter Day dinner together afterwards where he told his friends that I’d play ROSE before officially offering me the role. 

It’s funny to think of how awkward some of the early on experiences were because we were at the beginning of both being romantic partners as well as working partners. And the lines were pretty blurry at that point. 

That’s how I became ROSE. And I’ve held onto her ever since. 

When we were preparing to film the feature, we talked a lot about whether or not it made sense for me to play ROSE still, both as a casting choice and as a realistic choice because of the other responsibilities I had for the shoot. The question we would boil it down to was, did I still want to play ROSE and as long as my answer was yes, then that’s how we would proceed.