Kulukundis Wins First-Ever Best Casting Oscar
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- Cassandra Kulukundis won the Academy's inaugural Best Casting Oscar for "One Battle After Another," making her the first casting director ever to take home the award.
- Paul Thomas Anderson also won Best Adapted Screenplay for the same film, marking his and Kulukundis's tenth collaboration — she called the double win "full circle" and "insane."
- Kulukundis said each PTA film poses unique casting challenges, contrasting "Phantom Thread" with "Magnolia" and "Boogie Nights" and noting that "One Battle" in many ways "combined all of that."
- Kulukundis likened working on an Anderson movie to being in the "PTA Witness Protection Program," where you "literally don't talk to your friends and your family unless they have somebody that's right for the movie."
- Chase Infiniti made her feature film debut in the role Kulukundis cast her in; Kulukundis said she read dozens of women for the part and found Infiniti "demure and polite and fresh and so new and so innocent" who "found things that she didn't even know she had."
- Teyana Taylor stars alongside Infiniti, with Kulukundis describing her as a "fighter" after reading with dozens of women for the role of Perfidia Beverly Hills.
Why it matters: The Academy's first-ever Best Casting category elevates casting directors to Oscar-stage recognition for the first time, and Kulukundis — a ten-time PTA collaborator — now holds the singular distinction of being its inaugural recipient. Her win, paired with Anderson's Adapted Screenplay Oscar, reframes casting as a standalone craft on par with directing and writing.
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