Back in December, we wrote about The Cast Station’s casting call for a Cadillac “Real People” ad searching to fill a role for an “Alt-Right (Neo-Nazi),” specifying the call was in search of “REAL Alt-Right believers/thinkers.” Following social media backlash and a statement from Cadillac condemning the call, The Cast Station claimed sole responsibility in a Facebook apology. In its post, the company claimed that Cadillac (and presumably its agency Publicis) had not authorized the call but that it was “issued by mistake,” by “an employee, who was immediately terminated for her actions.”
A source identified the “immediately terminated” employee as New York, Chicago and Atlanta casting director Skylar Rote.
Now it seems something about the stories doesn’t add up.
Rote appears to still be with The Cast Station. She is still listed on The Cast Station’s contact page as a casting director in New York, Chicago and Atlanta. Her name also appeared on a recent casting call for a Beneful spot in the Austin area posted on the Corpus Christi Area Film Casting and Production Facebook page.
Clearly, this raises a few questions.
If our source was incorrect and Rote was not the employee that The Cast Station claims is solely responsible for posting the casting call, who is, and why was the call issued by someone other than the casting director? If, however, The Cast Station decided the casting call in question did not merit the termination of the employee who issued it, why did they claim the employee was “immediately terminated for her actions”—and did an outside party authorize the incident in question?
We’ve reached out to Publicis and The Cast Station but have yet to receive a response from either party.