“I auditioned for…I won’t say what it was. But I didn’t get the role for something really big because they told me, and I guess that wasn’t the only reason, but they told me I didn’t have enough followers on Instagram at the time,” actress Elle Fanning explained in a conversation with fellow actor Josh Horowitz on his podcast Happy Sad Confused. The 25-year-old actress, whose account has six million followers on this social network, has confirmed that the audition was for a big franchise. Read Marvel, DC or Star Wars.
Fanning began watching movies as a child, playing a smaller version of her sister, also actress Dakota Fanning, in the 2001 film I am Sam, which also starred Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer. He hasn’t stopped working since then, combining other commercial projects such as Maleficent (2014), starring Angelina Jolie, the flesh-and-blood version of Disney’s classic Sleeping Beauty, which offers a more human vision of the evil character, with independent films such as Somewhere (2010) or “La seducción” (2017), both directed by Sofia Coppola, or “The Neon Demon” (2016), directed by Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn.
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Now, as the actress herself pointed out on the podcast, she doesn’t feel any pressure to join a major franchise, although she recognizes that in her career she has to find a balance between most commercial cinema and independent films: “I would never say no to.” one of those projects, but I would hold meetings to really talk about what it would be,” Fanning said. “You need a balance. If you want to make indie films and especially produce them, working on a big one helps you franchise to feel calmer.”
Elle Fanning is neither the first nor the last celebrity to mention an uncomfortable reality in the film and television industry: that a good number of social media followers is at least as important as a good audition. “One of the most depressing things for me is when they do auditions they ask me about my Instagram and how many followers I have,” English actress Samantha Colley, who starred in the 2018 film Han Solo: A Star Wars Story, revealed in an interview with the Post Office. “It’s becoming increasingly unclear what people expect from an actress,” she added. On the other side of the same phenomenon is Sophie Turner, best known for her role as Sansa Stark on the hit series Game of Thrones, who revealed in an interview with The Telegraph that she got a role “against a better actress” because she ” more” have followers.” . And as a national example, the statements of the actor Aitor Luna, who has acted in series such as Los hombres de Paco, Gran Reserva or La catedral del mar. In an interview with Fotogramas he explained: “I know from friends, even casting directors, that they ask for exactly that. For new people at least 20,000 followers. If they blink and breathe while they have followers… it feels like a lag to me.
In a 2018 New York Post article titled “Studios Seek Insta-Celebrity Actors,” several industry insiders corroborated this fact. “Auditions for movies and shows come with a fan box to fill out…” said Amy Neben, representative of the Select Management Group. Casting director Sarah Clark gave the industry reasons: “Producers are looking for an educated audience. It’s hard to fight with them when they come up to you and say, “Well, this boy has five million followers, if he promotes his project, at least 100,000 people will see it.” The actors thus become marketing tools for the films , in which they star, running advertising campaigns that depart from the traditional junkets and land on red carpets to take to their social networks.
However, the data does not always seem to confirm this theory, as revealed by journalist Carlos Megía in an article published in SModa entitled “The “Corberó Paradox””: when millions of followers are not enough to sell tickets. Actors with millions of fans, such as Úrsula Corberó or Mario Casas, confirmed that a star in the channels does not necessarily occupy the seats: “Perhaps the bloodiest example of the division between supporters and viewers in our cinema is that of Úrsula Corberó”, “wrote he. The journalist in 2018, “Thanks to her character Tokyo in the series La casa de papel – an international phenomenon when it aired on Netflix – the performer became the national artist with the most followers on Instagram, over six million. On October 31, his latest work as the protagonist, El árbol de sangre, premiered in cinemas. The result? “According to the Ministry of Culture, just over 50,000 tickets have been sent out.”
Whether or not this translates to ticketing, the truth is that this practice is already established as something normal in the industry. In a conference series organized by The Grill, which was attended by several casting directors from the world of cinema and television in the United States, they reiterated that social media had become another variable, such as an actor’s performance or physique when it matters to get a role: “If I have two actors for the same role and I’m between actor A and actor B and actor B has 2 million followers while actor A has 20 million, they are acting as equals. ..or even if actor B is a little bit better, I’ll cast actor A,” said Jason Newman of talent agency Untitled Entertainment. “I want to ensure a higher return on investment. And social media is a very important part.” Lights, camera … and selfies!