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Casting Call: Into the Woods

Cindarelly, Cindarelly, poor Cindarelly left languishing over her mop and bucket by her evil step-family.  We would like the somewhat vulnerable-looking Brittany Snow to portray Lapine's atypical Cindarella.

 

Zac Efron as a singing prince charming is not an inventive choice, we know, but look at how pretty he is! Or rather, smoldering and masculine in this photo (thank you, Mikael Jansson). Besides, the philandering princes of Into the Woods aren't exactly High School Musical material; the role could give Mr. Efron a chance to have some fun with his squeaky-clean image.  Or perhaps we a just being a little lazy because it is Friday. Either way, we pick Zac Efron to play our Cinderella's Prince.

James Lapine's Jack is not the brightest of crayons, but he's earnest, not without good intentions, and a surprisingly tenacious. We nominate How to Succeed in Business' Darren Criss to play Jack the gullible giant-slayer.

 

 

The Baker is a key character in Into the Woods, one of the core four, and we think James Marsden could shine in the role. We know the man can sing, and with a guest role on the new season of 30 Rock, it seems Mr. Marsden has some humor in him.

 

The Baker's Wife was a trickier choice; we mentally auditioned quite a few actresses but none of them seemed quite right: Kate Mara looks too much like James Marsden, it would be creepy, Zoey Deschanel is too cute and overexposed, Emmy Rossum looks too young, etc., etc. We finally we settled on Sissy Spacek's daughter, Schuyler Fisk, as the only singing actress (and former Abercrombie model) with the right balance of naivety and mischief to play the Wife.

Tracey Ullman is a funny lady, really the only reason to watch Small Time Crooks, one of Woody Allen's early 2000s slump films. A less known fact, however, is that Ullman was once a fairly successful 1980s pop star—her song ‘Shattered' reached number 8 on the US Billboard charts. Paul McCartney guest-starred in one of her videos! While we are not encouraging Ullman to revive her pop career, we do think she'd make a wonderful Witch.