Eunice native Keller nominated for Emmy

Working with Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, Barbara Streisand, Natalie Portman sounds like a fantasy to most people, but one Eunice native is living the dream up in New York City.
“I came to New York City and accidentally fell into the business,” said Gayle Keller, a 1976 graduate of St. Ed. “I met a casting director, became an intern and worked for free.”
“I loved everything about the job. It’s so creative. You also have to be very organized. You have to remember lots of names — actors and actresses, their agents and what television shows and movies they have been in. You have to be always, constantly, organized, and that appealed to me.”
Keller, daughter of Reginald Keller and the late Gerry Latour Keller of Eunice, has been nominated for a Creative Arts Emmy for Casting for the F/X series “Louie.” This is the second time Keller has been nominated for an Emmy, and her previous nomination was also for the show “Louie.” The awards are given to the key technical disciplines and behind the scenes crafts of television production.
The awards ceremony will be Sept. 12 at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.
“It’s a week before the Emmy’s,” Keller said. “They just keep everything set up.”
“I’m super, super excited and honored. This is really the only award casting directors can be nominated for.”
Keller graduated from LSU in 1981 with degree in speech education and earned her master’s degree in theater before taking an intern job in New York. Following the internship, she landed a job as an assistant then as an associate casting director at the NBC show “Deadline” which was canceled after a year.
“The creator of ‘Deadline’ was Dick Wolf, who created Law and Order and then ‘Law and Order: Criminal Intent,’” Keller said. “I was casting director there (at (“Law and Order: Criminal Intent”) for two years, and the show ran for 10 years.”
“Once you have a little bit on your resume, you are recommended or people just call you (for casting jobs). New York is a big city, but the pool of casting people is pretty small.”
In addition to working on “Louie,” Keller is also working on the show “Inside Amy Schumer.” As a casting director, Keller’s job consists of going through an episode script, writing down all the characters in the episode and a description for each of them and the finding actors or actresses via their agents or through a database Keller keeps. She then auditions the actors or actresses and makes recommendations to the show’s director on which actress or actor should be selected for the part.