“There Are Worse Things I Could Do” than cast older actors to play teens, argues the casting director behind “Grease.”
“Grease” hit movie theaters in 1978 and became an instant cult classic. However, despite the eye-catching 1950s costumes and infectious music numbers, one thing always stood out to audiences: the actors’ ages.
Casting director Joel Thurm got candid recently for the film’s 45th anniversary about how many have criticized him for casting adult-aged stars to play teens at Rydell High School.
“People might say the cast is too old, but ‘Grease’ is not a documentary; it’s a fantasy,” Thurm told the Guardian in an oral history for the movie recently.
“It is a non-PC fairytale that is better for the cast not being teens,” Thurm went on. “The only thing that was important was that the cast all looked about the same age as each other, which they did.”
Star John Travolta — who played ladies’ man Danny Zuko — was 23 when he signed on for the flick.
He may be one of the youngest people in the cast, but he was still a guy in his early ’20s playing a 17-year-old.
Stockard Channing, who portrayed headstrong Pink Lady Betty Rizzo, was 33 when she was hired.
The late Olivia Newton-John was 29 when she played Sandy Olsson, the film’s female lead. Most of the supporting cast members were also in their 30s or late 20s during shooting.
Thurm revealed that it was Travolta, now 69, who wanted the Australian native for the role of Sandy.
“Unusually for a star like Olivia, she asked for a screen test because she was a singer, not an actor, and she was unsure about being quite a bit older than John,” he told the publication.
He explained that the crew set up a full film test of the drive-in scene and “she was perfect.”
Thurm went on: “She was so good that I didn’t have a backup Sandy — if Olivia had said no, you’d see me in the film in a skirt and a blonde wig!”
And despite Channing, now 79, seemingly being too old and too different in background from her character to play Rizzo, Thurm confessed that she “mesmerized” everyone in the audition room and they “knew it had to be her.”
“Stockard could not have been more wrong as a person for Rizzo — she was well-born and wealthy and her manner of speech was totally different,” he said.
Thurm added he knew without a doubt that the movie was “going to be a hit.” He explained that there was a ’50s revival going on in pop culture at the time, especially with the debut of the sitcom “Happy Days” in 1974.
“The timing was right,” he pointed out. “The critics didn’t matter, since they forgot that audiences go to movies to have fun.”
In addition to giving stellar performances, the stars of the film had palpable chemistry and a lifelong bond.
Newton-John, who died in August 2022 after a battle with breast cancer, had maintained a friendship with Travolta from their “Grease” days until her passing.
In her 2018 autobiography, “Don’t Stop Believin,’” she writes about how the on-screen couple had an “undeniable attraction” towards each other offscreen but never acted on their impulses.
“Yes, we really liked each other and there was an attraction, but we would never date because we were both involved with other people at the time,” she penned. “Both of us have a loyalty streak that runs deep.”
