In Highlight Coil, Awards Insider interviews some of this year’s most notable Emmy nominees about all of their nominated work. In this entry we speak with Dope and Succession casting director Avy Kaufman, two-time Emmy winner, responsible for some of prestige television’s most acclaimed ensembles.

“It’s almost like my loved ones all walk into the room,” Avy Kaufman says deep into our interview. “Actually, I have goosebumps.”

One of Hollywood’s most accomplished casting directors, Kaufman has been actively working in television for nearly two decades now and has an impressive Emmy resume to show off: eight nominations, including two wins for the first season inspired by damage and the stacked second season of Succession. Between those, she’s worked on some of TV’s liveliest shows – quietly elevating a range of character actors from relative obscurity to beloved presences – as well as Oscar contenders like King Richard and Ma Rainey’s black background.

She gets emotional on several occasions as we review her past TV projects, which feature some of her closest associates — and in at least one case, a close neighbor and friend. “When the familiar actors came by and came on tape, it was almost like your cousin was coming on,” she says wistfully. “You give them good material, and they come and it’s not a job. It’s funny.”

That’s changing now as the company moves to Zoom post-pandemic. For one of his nominated projects this year, Dope, Kaufman had to cast entirely from a distance and fight for names that didn’t seem obvious. But after doing this for so many years, few know actors — and how to put them together — like Kaufman. And it still brings together some of the best and most surprising bands on screen. Here’s how she did it.

Empire Falls (2005, nominated)

This HBO mini-series, adapted from Richard Russo novel, which explores events in a small town in Maine, marked the beginning of Kaufman’s foray into prestige television, though it didn’t seem like it at the time. “It didn’t look like TV; it was like a little movie with Fred Schepsisi,she says. With this director and the HBO brand behind him, Kaufman has assembled a stellar cast of Oscar nominees and winners, including Ed Harris and Helen Hunt, as well as a bunch of New York theater actors whose work Kaufman knew well, and whom she cast again and again: Kate Burton, Jeffrey DeMunn, Lou Taylor Pucci, Stephen Mendillo.

Empire Falls awarded the industry’s first major award to Philip Seymour Hoffman – he was nominated for supporting actor Emmy – before he won an Oscar the following year for Hood. Kaufman threw both Empire Falls and Hood plus a ton of other roles for Hoffman, dating back to 1994 no one is fooled against Paul Newman. “He was a dear person in my life,” Kaufman recalls. (She also cast Hoffman’s feature debut, Jack is boating.)

Ironically enough, Hoffman lost that Emmy to Newman, his co-star again in Empire Falls. The miniseries is perhaps best known for marking the final screen roles of Newman and his late wife, Joanne Woodward, whose careers and marriage are explored in the new Ethan Hawke HBO docuseries The latest movie stars. If the Hoffman-Newman reunion seemed like Kaufman’s magic, however, she assures that Newman’s half was a little beyond her skill set. “I’m sure it was wishful thinking, but I know Richard Russo really helped with that.”

damage (2008, win)

Kaufman won his first Emmy as a member of FX’s legal thriller casting team, which won acting trophies for the lead role Glenn Close— make a high-profile appearance on television — and support escapism Zeljko Ivanek. The show had Close attached from the start, but Kaufman came in and helped spice up the FX drama – which, along with Mad Men, was the first basic cable show ever nominated for a Best Series Emmy — with both big, unfamiliar small-screen names and theater actors (like Ivanek) getting a break on the big screen.