You’ve Got
the Look

Auditing the Art of Casting
with Nafisa Kaptownwala
and Natalie Lin of
In Search Of Agency

Interview: Anupa Mistry
Images/Photos Courtesy Of: In Search Of

“We're hired to essentially just send faces to clients,” says Natalie Lin, “but for us it's so much deeper than that.” Lin, along with her friend Nafisa Kaptownwala, are founders of the intrepid new casting and management agency, In Search Of. Despite only launching this year, they already count brands like Balenciaga and Nike as clients. “I am a true believer of intuition and I just had a really good feeling about Natalie,” says Kaptownwala. But before things can get too girl boss-y, she adds, “And also, how some days we're one foot in, and one foot out.” The agency’s name originally suggested an open-ended optimism to me, but while speaking with the duo over Zoom I get the sense that its indeterminacy is more of a watchful ambivalence.

Featured In This Image: STORY mfg. scarf. Top Image: Model wears Chopova Lowena necklace.

Before coming together, Kaptownwala, 34, helmed her own street casting agency, Lorde Inc., which was devoted to a frank representational approach that she’s since moved on from. Lin, 28, whose background is in photography, honed her scouting skills working at commercial agencies. A commitment to narrative storytelling is what unites the two and, as a result, film projects are increasingly on their radar. But there’s a deeper ethos to In Search Of, taking it beyond workaday casting agency and toward a social archive. As brands like Nike, Starbucks, Airbnb, and even your local beauty bar use advertising to reflect more human diversity in terms of gender, race, body size, and ability, it becomes important to question what our collective gaze is being directed toward. In the media, too, the fashion establishment has gestured toward meaningful change: recall model Paloma Elsesser’s moodily lit Vogue US cover revealed in December 2020. These public stories drive the emotional narratives of a society, and yet, the process is often opaque, reflective of the insular, data-driven mandates of corporate marketing departments.

Right now, the deeper purpose of In Search Of is a future encounter: a body of gathering ideas that can one day be referenced. The archive maintains its integrity, maybe a more truthful inclusivity, by preserving the faces and stories that don’t make it into advertisements and onto TV shows. The people that Lin and Kaptownwala encounter in malls, on the street, and through Zoom castings, are too precious to exist simply as names on a call sheet.

Anupa Mistry

Nafisa Kaptownwala and Natalie Lin

You’re both emerging from periods of significant reflection. What ideas did you bring together for this new iteration of your casting careers?

NK: We would love to see a space that is more narrative-driven and isn't focused on who are the coolest, hottest models at the moment. Putting that emphasis back on the street and everyday people was something that we were really excited about. Once we cracked that open a little bit, we started to talk about the possibility of casting as a space of archiving different types of people, subcultures, and conversations.

NL: When you talk to, like, 30 people in a day and ask them all the same question—“What did you eat today? What does love mean to you?”—they'll have totally different answers. In 30 years those responses are going to speak to the larger cultural context of now, and other people will answer those questions differently in 30 years.

I just finished this short documentary. We were casting father and son pairs in six different states. I found this cowboy pair in Mississippi, and then we found this three-generation family that does traditional New Mexican folk music. Those two families are never going to meet. They have no idea the other exists. But we get to make these connections [between them], and share it with everybody else.

Featured In This Image: Undercover hoodie, SC103 tote, Chopova Lowena gloves, Jil Sander beanie and Comme des Garçons Wallets wallet.

In positioning yourself as an alternative to traditional casting, how are you thinking about what’s behind your own gaze?

NK: I got into this work because I wanted to have my position considered in casting direction. But what we’re doing now is turning to the people we cast and asking them, “How would you see this character?” I’m working on this film right now and one of the characters is a nonbinary person. So a conversation was happening between the director and the actor that we ended up casting, if there are lines or something with this part that they want to change. We can open up that dialogue.

NL: There's not a ton of casting directors who aren't white, so I trust my instincts and I trust Nafisa’s instincts. So far it hasn't led us the wrong way.

One thing I’ve always wondered about street casting is what it means to bring people from outside of the “mainstream,” especially people who might not have much social power, into the insular worlds of brands and media. Like, it’s one thing to have your photo taken, and it’s another to see how that image circulates.

NL: I do a lot of street scouting here in Florida, and people have no frame of reference for what I'm talking about. When I approach them they're just minding their business. In New York people get it faster, maybe because they've been approached before or they work in a creative field. It’s more part of life there.

We street cast all these amazing people, but they're very much real people, and maybe they've never been on set before. It really hurts me when I bring these people to set and they're not being treated well. When production is crazy, and everyone's really stressed out, maybe the director is not being super nice, it starts to feel a lot more like they are just being used rather than an exchange of storytelling, you know? It has happened, and I still don't know how to avoid that because most of the time we're halfway into a project before realizing that maybe there isn’t an understanding. I don't have an answer other than being more selective with who we work with.

NK: Projects move so quickly and people are so deadline-oriented, so it's a web of things that are happening simultaneously. We advocate for the people we are casting as much as we can. If they need someone to speak up for them, we will always take that position. We always let them know that they’re the talent—whether they're everyday people or professional. There is a power dynamic that's happening when they're being captured. And if they find out after the fact that, say, their image was used somewhere that wasn't explained to them, I’ll reach out to clients and speak up.

I wonder if some people or subcultures or communities are too sacred, or too valuable, to be brought into these dynamics?

NK: I don't necessarily feel like I need to be helping brands connect with these really incredible stories all the time, if that's not what's needed for that project. The narratives that are more sacred are for personal projects that showcase how special it is. It’s not the project that activates me as a creative person but the thinking we get to do to find those folks.

I feel pretty weird about commercials lately. We’re seeing more racial diversity in ads as a response to real outrage about the police killing and brutalizing Black folks. It feels dystopian.

NL: I pay so much attention to commercials now.

NK: Commercials are so cringe. They flatten the American experience, and that's exactly what they're going for. I used to really care about representation. Who didn't in the age of Tumblr? But now I get the ick about it.

Featured In This Image: BAPE messenger bag, Jil Sander beanie and SC103 tote.

I recently saw an Amazon commercial about women delivery workers in India, and one of the drivers has their kid on the back of a scooter. It’s this very obvious message about empowering poor women with jobs, and it’s using older narratives about poverty and gender roles in the global south to counter what workers are saying very loudly—that working for Amazon is exploitative.

NK: I saw that too, and I fully dissociated. There are like 10 or 15 people looking at that storyboard before it’s anywhere close to being in production, and they're like, “This is going to be a great commercial!” Representation has taken this turn into narrative storytelling, but remains within the lens of consumerism and capitalism. That's the gag. Diversity has become such an important part of selling products because people are like, “Oh wait, there's a whole market of people that we're not advertising to.”

What has it been like going from mostly working solo to working in a partnership?

NK: Having a thought partner is really important. I feel really appreciative for Natalie as my thought partner, specifically. I don't know how I did it before.

NL: Long-term, casting is impossible to do as one person.

Right, most large-scale creative projects are not one person—despite the prevailing idea of the solitary genius.

NK: Yeah, and it's so common to gatekeep knowledge and information on how to build a successful business. Coming together is our way of anti-gatekeeping.

Interview: Anupa Mistry
Images/Photos Courtesy Of: In Search Of
Date: June 23, 2022