Reality TV's high-stakes casting now less hunch than science

By David Carr
The New York Times

	JOSH REYNOLDS / AP Casting director Brendon Blincoe, back to camera, speaks to a group of applicants for NBC's "The Apprentice" during auditions held in Boston last weekend.
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NEW YORK — In a suite high above Columbus Circle, Rob LaPlante is looking for next season's breakout TV star. No agent is hovering nearby, no technical crew, just LaPlante, his assistant and a digital video camera, auditioning Laura Fluor, a car saleswoman from Monmouth County, N.J.

"Let's talk about the sharks," LaPlante, casting producer of "The Apprentice," said, referring to Fluor's colleagues on the showroom floor.

"Car salesmen are not known for their gentility," Fluor acknowledged demurely, before happily relating a recent donnybrook with a co-worker who accused her of poaching a client.

LaPlante clearly is pleased with Fluor's moxie. But for Fluor to be cast in the second season of "The Apprentice" next fall, she will have to make it through six rounds of cuts, two extensive questionnaires, a medical exam, an intelligence test and the kind of background check usually reserved for secret agents.

The casting of reality shows, once an intuitive, on-the-fly endeavor, has become much more of a science, with a growing set of protocols and rituals.

Several producers have hired psychologists to help them with the vetting process. And to avoid the unscripted scandals that could run afoul of the decency standards of an increasingly agitated public and the Federal Communications Commission, both producers and networks are investing more time and money into systematically investigating their contestants' backgrounds.

All the due diligence is not surprising. The reality genre, viewed not so long ago as a somewhat tawdry sideline, has become a main event for the networks. Few new scripted shows, particularly comedies, are connecting in a meaningful way with audiences; meanwhile, the likes of "American Idol," "Survivor" and "The Simple Life" are thriving, so the networks increasingly are leaning on the reality genre for both ratings and profits.

	AP A woman hoping to be cast for "The Apprentice" appears for an audition in Florida with the show's name on her suit in tape.

"The Apprentice" — with its majestic views of the New York skyline and lingering shots of the show's other superstructure, Donald Trump's hair — is built on a seemingly can't-miss concept, a seductive weave of aspiration and Darwinism. But to make it one of the most-watched and most-profitable shows on NBC, LaPlante and his staff first must winnow at least 250,000 applicants down to 16 potential apprentices the masses will adopt as their own. In reality programming, the cast is the thing.

"These are the people who are the narrators of our show," LaPlante said. "They have to look into the camera and be believable and interesting."

LaPlante, 28, already is a veteran, having honed his casting skills on the progenitors of the reality-show trend, MTV's "The Real World" and "Road Rules."

His talent: finding regular people who, trapped in artificial constructions with cameras rolling, are abnormally interesting. He is not looking precisely for next year's Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, the pot-stirrer of the first season who antagonized fellow cast members with her constant carping and enthusiastic back-stabbing.

But he uses the research results, opinions of others, mock exercises and, finally, his gut to decide whom he wants America to learn to hate or love.

Casting for TV's new way of telling stories requires stamina. By the time LaPlante has finished casting the second season of "The Apprentice," he will have visited 13 cities and conducted hundreds of group interviews at open casting calls.

Of tens of thousands who will apply in the next few months, 50 will be invited to a mock version of the show in Los Angeles, and 16 will make the cut.

"Many shows are looking for what they think would make good television, but my primary concern is authenticity," said Mark Burnett, the man who conceived "The Apprentice" and "Survivor." "When it comes to 'Survivor,' you are looking for adventurers, and for 'The Apprentice,' you want people who are genuine entrepreneurs."

Burnett says he never knows how a show is going to turn out.

"The unpredictability of my shows is why people watch," he said. "On our shows, you might completely buy into someone, and they are gone the next week."

Of course, there is another, less pleasant side to the unpredictability of the genre. "I don't want to get to the second-to-last episode of the season," Burnett said, "and find out that one of my contestants is on the Internet with a goat or something terrible like that."

The increasing ubiquity of reality programming has been accompanied by a raft of mini-scandals about the contestants. More recently, an "American Idol" contestant was dropped after being arrested on drunken-driving charges after a party celebrating a victory on the show.

"A couple of shows got burned, and they didn't like the publicity, so they began asking us to look into people's backgrounds," said Elaine Carey, national director of investigations for the Control Risks Group, which has done work for ABC and CBS. The company has a 20-page questionnaire that it tailors to particular shows in consultation with the network's lawyers and standards executives.

But the vetting of contestants can create tensions between the creative executives and the executives in charge of standards.

"Producers are all about the characters," said Ben Silverman, chief executive of Reveille, a production company that produced "The Restaurant" for NBC, "Nashville Star" for USA Networks and the forthcoming "Blowout," a reality series about a hair salon in Beverly Hills, Calif., for Bravo. "But networks have to look after their advertisers and affiliates. There have been times when I fought for contestants, but have not won the argument."

It is an odd line to walk and one that seems to keep moving. In 2000, producer Mike Fleiss had a hit for Fox called "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire." But it was discovered after the season ended that the prospective groom was named in a restraining order obtained a decade earlier by an ex-girlfriend who claimed he threatened her.

"It really damaged my career," said Fleiss, who found himself temporarily exiled from network television but is back in the thick of it with the ABC hit "The Bachelor." "But I think people are realizing now that if you put anybody under that kind of presidential scrutiny, you are going to find out something weird about them."

Sometimes, a seamy background story can add to the tang of the show. Before "The Simple Life" was broadcast on Fox, it was revealed that one star, Nicole Richie, had pleaded guilty to heroin possession and that Paris Hilton was in a sex video put on the Internet by a former boyfriend. The revelations did little to hamper the show's success.

Finding the right mix of authenticity and contrivance in a candidate can be a touchy-feely exercise. "A big part of what we do is giving the producers a big enough palette, enough diversity, to tell a story," LaPlante said. "I think people turn on the television and like watching these people, but they have no idea what we went through to find them. Our job is to work through the layers that people have and see if they have something special."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company