Angela Peri of the Boston Casting talent firm.
When Hollywood comes to town to make a “Boston movie,” like 2023’s “The Holdovers” starring Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa, finding the faces in the crowd is often the job of Boston Casting, the biggest such agency in the Boston area.
Boston Casting was founded in 1990 by fifth-generation Cantabrigian Angela Peri. Over a croissant and chai at the Iggy’s Bread cafe in Huron Village, Imagine, Peri walked me through her story.
She’s a Cambridge Rindge and Latin School alum who was bitten by the acting bug. Though her mother discouraged the pursuit, Peri went to Los Angeles and Italy and dabbled in the business as a makeup artist, comedian and bit performer. She brushed elbows with Denis Leary and Ellen DeGeneres on the L.A. comedy scene and, while in Italy, graced the screen ever so briefly in “Cinema Paradiso” (1988), the Academy Award-winning love letter to community movie houses.
Back in East Cambridge, Peri clerked at the courthouse processing traffic tickets and was on the waitstaff at The Daily Catch and Boston’s Salty Dog, storing up tips with her next venture in mind: opening Boston Casting. She found offices on Thorndike Street, close to the courthouse and not far from the home she grew up in on Second Street. (A great grandfather, Pasquale Candora, immigrated here from Italy in the late 1800s and was involved in the building of the nearby St. Francis of Assisi Church. Her brother occupies the family house, while Peri lives in West Cambridge and has a son in college.)
At the time, Boston-shot films were not really a thing, because unions, logistics, and other factors made it expensive to film here. “Boston” films were shot mostly in places such as Toronto and given obligatory, orienteering shots, such as skylines with the Hancock building or of our scenic harbor. (This still happens: “It Ends With Us” (2024) was set here but shot in New Jersey.)
In the early aughts, though, governors Mitt Romney and Deval Patrick sought to spark business revenue and implemented tax cuts for Boston-shot productions.
Which films get the accents right? Peri applauds “Patriots Day” and gives Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” (2006) the low grade.
Smash cut to present day and Peri has now cast more than 140 films plus television shows and commercials in the Boston area, including the Academy Award-winning “Coda” (Best Picture, 2021), “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “The Perfect Couple” TV series (2024), “Knives Out” casts and “The Holdovers” (2023) and the 2016 docudrama rewind of the Marathon bombing, “Patriot’s Day.” Her next project is another Boston-based work with Mark Wahlberg, Peri said. She says there are at least 14 films in process in Boston right now, though filming and casting shoots down in the colder months.
Boston Casting found the skaters for a scene on Boston Common – a scene actually shot in Worcester – in “The Holdovers” (2023).
Peri says the tax breaks made productions more willing to stick around after getting shots of the big visual draws – Harvard, crew sculls on the Charles, the fall foliage and snow – and the number of area Screen Actors Guild actors in her database jumped in that era from 600 to 1,800. These days she has a database of nearly 100,000 faces she can call onto set, some experienced and in the guild and others raw and curious. She is looking constantly for new talent.
“Now a cameraman or an actor can live and work here and not have to go to L.A.,” Peri said.
Boston Casting, now on Harrison Avenue in Boston, also offers acting classes and coaching. Peri runs the business with her partner of nearly 30 years, Lisa Lobel.
Peri has a deep love of Cambridge. “On Sundays,” she says reflecting on her youth in East Cambridge, “when you walked down the street all you could smell was tomato sauce wafting out of the windows and everyone played Frank Sinatra.” Now, the progressivism makes the city “God’s country. It’s so inclusive, accessible, welcoming and diverse, and with some of the best food.”
A casting agent can’t just be a promoter, though – she has to be an expert. “Did you know the Cambridge accent is different than the Boston accent?” Peri asked. I didn’t. “It’s a Boston accent with a bit of New York to it.”
Which films get the accents right? Peri applauds “Patriots Day” and gives Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” (2006) the low grade. “Part of that,” Peri said, “was that all the A talent brought their own voice coaches. You got some real Boston accents, but also a Kennedy and Quincy accents as well.”
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