Casting Director Reveals the Depressing Way Hollywood Sees Women

Fast Company has a profile on Allison Jones, the woman behind the idiosyncratic casting behind all of those Michael Shur shows and Judd Apatow movies. If you haven’t heard of her before, she’s the one responsible for finding McLovin’ for Superbad, and more recently getting Timothy Simons a regular role on Veep as Jonah, the lowest staffer on the White House totem pole.

While the piece goes out of its way to portray Jones as quietly brilliant and humble, it does print a semi-critical quote about how Hollywood producers see women:

“There’s still pushback, especially with women — when they’re not that attractive but they’re hilarious, it still doesn’t matter to many people. They don’t get it.” But didn’t a film like Bridesmaids help break down some of those barriers? “Moderately,” Jones says. “It mostly just helped those actresses. It’s still tough.”

Jones then says that she remedies this problem by bringing back people she likes for audition after audition until someone casts them. I would love to know which unconventionally attractive but funny women she has specifically done this for.