The right synergy between writing and casting helped buoy Pretty Hard Cases‘ first season to one of the most-nominated series in the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards, say the minds behind the series.

The Cameron Pictures-produced dramedy, which stars Meredith MacNeill and Adrienne C. Moore as detectives forced to work together as unlikely partners, picked up 11 nominations in the comedy category, second in nominations behind fellow CBC series Sort Of and tying with the final season of CTV Sci-Fi Channel’s Wynonna Earp.

Of those 11 nominations, six were in the performance category, including for regular cast members MacNeill, Al Mukadam and Karen Robinson, and guest stars Tricia Black, Amanda Brugel and Kim Coates. Pretty Hard Cases is also tied with Kim’s Convenience for the most performance nominations in the 2022 comedy category.

Casting director Sharon Forrest, who is also nominated for Best Achievement in Casting, Fiction for her work on the series with sister and partner Susan Forrest, says the process of casting Pretty Hard Cases was a collaborative effort between herself and co-creators and executive producers Tassie Cameron and Sherry White early into the writing process. “It always starts with the writing,” she tells Playback Daily, adding that a series such as Pretty Hard Cases “will cast itself” when you give actors an opportunity to play comedy with a dab of depth.

A core example is Coates’ guest role (pictured right), a stereotypical mob character who is also striving to be a feminist. White says she and Cameron approached Forrest early in the writing process about who to cast, and the casting director immediately pitched Coates for the role. They also took the advice of stars MacNeill and Moore, which led to MacNeill pitching CSA-nominated guest Black for the role of Detective Tara Swallows.

Both Forrest and Cameron say the casting process for Pretty Hard Cases is an example of the direction the industry is going in finding a wider breadth of talent over adhering to specific standards of beauty.

“We’re not ‘TV glamorous’ in our casting, we are much more interested in people who have charisma, charm and spark,” says Cameron. “We’re not having to fill some kind of U.S. network tick boxes on how people need to look, too, which means we get to cast the most extraordinary comedians and theatre actors. I think that’s a trend in casting across the board actually. People are sick of trying to look at impossibly gorgeous people on their screen all the time who all look like each other.”

Forrest says that she’s had more success recently in pitching different “shapes, sizes and ethnicities” as casting choices in shows as more decision-makers become open-minded. She adds that “no is an not answer anymore” when it comes to casting authentic and diverse representation, which is starting to have a trickle-down effect on the volume of talent available.

“It’s opening the market up now,” she says. “There’s a lot more [Black, Indigenous and persons of colour] kids and teenagers that are getting into [acting] because they can see themselves on screen now. I think the talent is just going to grow and grow and grow because people can tell their mom or dad, ‘take me to acting classes – look who made it.'”

The awards for drama and comedy crafts, as well as scripted programs and performance, will be handed out virtually on Thursday evening (April 7).

Top picture (L-R): Adrienne C. Moore and Al Mukadam