<\/p>\n
\n\t[This story contains mild spoilers from The Studio<\/a> season finale.]<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019re watching The Studio, and every minute pretty much seems to bring another A-lister who either makes a two-minute appearance or has a multiple-episode arc. It starts out with Bryan Cranston, who stars as Continental Studios CEO Griffin Mill \u00a0\u2013 and throughout the first season, stars like Zo\u00eb Kravitz, Dave Franco, Olivia Wilde, Adam Scott, Charlize Theron, Ron Howard, Zac Efron, Steve Buscemi, Quinta Brunson, Greta Lee, Anthony Mackie, Ted Sarandos\u2026 the list goes on and on (here\u2019s a full list of guest stars<\/a>).<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the star caliber is massive, there was one clear \u201cwhite whale\u201d that co-creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg <\/a>were going for \u2014 and actually got.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI feel like they got their white whale, which was Martin Scorsese,\u201d casting director Melissa Kostenbauder tells THR. \u201cI know what big fans they are, and truly everyone is of Marty, and once they got him and Ron Howard, it really started to show people the kind of level they were looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0In\u00a0The Studio,\u00a0which released its season finale early on Tuesday, Rogen stars as Matt Remick,\u00a0a newly appointed (fictional) head<\/a>\u00a0of the embattled Continental Studios who finds himself forever fighting and debating with his fellow creatives and demanding actors over whether art and commerce can coexist in Hollywood. Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn, Catherine O\u2019Hara and Chase Sui Wonders also star.<\/p>\n \n\tKostenbauder, whose credits include Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty and Tokyo Vice, says Apple TV, a frequent distributor of Scorsese\u2019s projects like recent Killers of the Flower Moon and home to a first-look deal with his Sikelia Productions banner, was a big aid in scoring the legendary filmmaker.<\/p>\n \n\tKostenbauder recalls a very \u201cunusual casting process\u201d in that they wouldn\u2019t send scripts when initially sending the offer out to the talent. \u201cWe would offer up a meeting with Seth and Evan, and they were so good about making time to talk to all those people to help woo them and explain the character and answer any questions and make them comfortable, because it was never their intention to lampoon anyone.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tOnce the meeting was over, scripts were sent to the talent for full transparency: \u201cIt was a matter of getting everybody on the same page and communicating ahead of time.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSome were game, and some weren\u2019t,\u201d Kostenbauder says of some of the characters\u2019 story arcs. \u201cAnd some really did want to lean more into \u2013 I don\u2019t know if it was Olivia Wilde or Dave Franco \u2013 kind of poking fun at themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe idea to have Cranston play Griffin Mill came from Rogen and Goldberg, says Kostenbauder. \u201cBryan had been vocal during the [2023 actors\u2019 and writers\u2019] strikes and with the studios and when we talked to his agent \u2014 I\u2019ve known her for a long time \u2014 we just talked it out and gaged interest, and then he met with the guys and luckily, he was game, because he\u2019s so, so good.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter news that Scorsese and Howard were participating in The Studio, more and more people signed on, she explains. \u201cWe really approached a lot of them simultaneously because we filmed all the episodes closely together,\u201d says Kostenbauder. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about actors who are in high demand, so a lot of them were interested but weren\u2019t available.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe process of casting all the guest actors started before Kostenbauer actually joined the project. At first, Francine Maisler was the casting director on the project and had started the pilot before the strikes. When the actors and writers strikes happened in 2023, production had to pause and months later when they were set to return to set, Maisler became unavailable. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI jumped on to finish the pilot and do the rest of the series. It was clear from the jump, though, the world they were creating and the world they were living in. There are a lot of celebrities in there, and they actually wrote a lot of them into the script, so when you\u2019re reading the script, it has so and so\u2019s name in this situation,\u201d says Kostenbauder. \u201cIt was pretty clear the level of people they would need to get in order for this type of thing to work.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe continuous tracking shots, or \u201coners,\u201d<\/a> that have now become synonymous with The Studio was also baked into the script and played heavily into the casting aspect as well.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe always put care into who we\u2019re casting and making sure that they feel comfortable on set, but with this one, it really was a bit heavy-handed in terms of, you\u2019re going to be in this one shot for one hour with some of these really high-level people who are at the top of their game,\u201d says the casting director. \u201cWe were really mindful about making sure that they could handle it and were up for it and able to do it. It was just finding the ones who fit best.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFor Kostenbauder, having this caliber and this amount of guest stars was crucial to the success of the show.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think for it to be believable, it did really depend on having these really high-level actors and directors and writers participating,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Studio, which has been renewed for a second season<\/a>, is now streaming all episodes on Apple TV+. Read THR\u2018s full season chat with co-creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.hollywoodreporter.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [This story contains mild spoilers from The Studio season finale.] You\u2019re watching The Studio, and every minute pretty much seems to bring another A-lister who either makes a two-minute appearance or has a multiple-episode arc. It starts out with Bryan Cranston, who stars as Continental Studios CEO Griffin Mill \u00a0\u2013 and throughout the first season, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2261095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[388333,25060,52216,311180,332674],"class_list":["post-2261094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-2025-emmys","tag-awards","tag-emmys","tag-seth-rogen","tag-the-studio"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/How-\u2018The-Studio-Landed-All-Those-A-List-Guest-Stars-Season.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2261094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2261096,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261094\/revisions\/2261096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2261095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2261094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2261094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2261094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}