RTS Craft & Design Awards 2020

This year’s Award for an Outstanding Achievement in British Television is presented to a professional one newspaper recently called “the most influential casting director working today”. With almost two hundred screen casting credits to her name, the list of her television work reads like a directory of award-winning drama – Game of Thrones, The Crown, Patrick Melrose, Chernobyl, Top of the Lake, Harlots, Daniel Deronda, Tipping The Velvet, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Secret State, John Adams, Wolf Hall…the list goes on and on.

Nina’s casting journey began while she was still at university, working on student productions. Then, one day in the mid-Eighties, she helped a friend out by casting extras in an AC/DC music video. And so it began. One pop video led to another, and before long Nina was also casting television commercials. In 1992 she cast a McDonalds ad directed by Mike Leigh. He spotted her obvious flair, and later in the decade asked Nina to cast her first feature film, Topsy Turvy. Her subsequent work in cinema has gone on to cover the range of movie making from Hollywood blockbusters like Star Wars, Jurassic World and Mamma Mia, to modestly budgeted British films like Sunshine on Leith.

On television, Nina’s skills in the nuanced alchemy of casting have created a generation of stars who are now familiar faces but were given their early breaks by her. Every year she scours drama schools and acting workshops in her relentless search for new talent. She’s acknowledged to have the best antennae in the business, but she combines this with a gift for surprise - she often casts unexpected actors into roles that they then somehow end up appearing born to play. Nina’s a risk taker, but one with exceptional judgment and great taste. The writer and showrunner of The Crown, Peter Morgan said, “She’s like a benevolent pickpocket. You walk in to meet her with a pocketful of what you think are brilliant casting ideas. By the time you leave, you’ve none of those ideas anymore, but your pockets have been filled with others, which you then find out are all inevitably better.”

The truth is that when casting is done really well, the audience don’t notice. It becomes invisible. It’s only when it’s done badly that it becomes conspicuous, when someone’s uttered those deadly words, “They’ll do”. But that’s never been Nina’s way. She never settles for second best, never compromises in her mission to find the right actor for the role. Her unwavering respect for actors, her perceptive understanding of what kind of actor the text might need, the way she forges deep bonds with directors, producers and agents – these are the qualities Nina brings to her work. More than anything, she cares profoundly about the difference that casting can make to a production. During her thirty years in the business, she’s raised the game of casting in British television…setting a new standard. The Gold Standard. By any measure, an outstanding achievement.