Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.

My guest, Alison Jones, was the casting director behind many of the most beloved comedies

of the last few decades among them, Freaks and Geeks, which involved open auditions across

the United States and Canada and introduced the world to then child actors, James Franco,

Linda Cardellini, Seth Rogan, Jason Siegel, and Martin Star.

So how do you cast a female lead in a funny movie when that female lead might be kind of

incidental, you know, just the male leads wife and they don't get any jokes or whatever?

They are thankless roles, I don't know what else to say.

I think they must be, I can't speak for the actors themselves, but they must be thankless

roles because still attractiveness matters to all these directors and studios mostly.

You know, I don't want to name any names, but studios, various studios all the way back

to 40-year-old Virgin passed on some now very famous women who they just didn't think

were pretty enough to do one of the supporting female roles.

So funny doesn't, I don't think funny matters to them.

I think they'll say it does, but still they only look first at what they see.

It's Bullseye.

Coming up, I'll talk to actor Chua-Tel Ejafor.

He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in 12 Years of Slave.

The experience taught him that being an artist wasn't something he'd ever be able to finish.

You're always striving for something, some intangible.

I don't know if I'll ever even get to the roots of understanding what it possibly is for

...