Rocky Horror casting director reveals the genius way he got Susan Sarandon to audition

As The Rocky Horror Picture Show marks its 50th anniversary, new details about how the film assembled its iconic cast have emerged in the documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror. Casting director Joel Thurm revealed a calculated, time-sensitive tactic that helped bring Susan Sarandon into the room for a reading that set the stage for a film that would become a late-night, cult favorite. Thurm also described why Barry Bostwick, then an up-and-coming American presence, was the right fit for Brad Majors, and how the combination of Sarandon and Bostwick helped anchor the movie’s unlikely magic.

Thurm said Brad Majors was “custom-made for Barry,” noting that the role required a strong singer and an all-American look. He explained that Sarandon, who wanted to audition, faced resistance from her agents. “Her agents did not want her to audition for the piece, so I found a way to get around it. It was very simple,” Thurm recalled. “When Barry was coming in for his audition, I said, ‘Just bring Susan.’” Sarandon herself recalled that she wasn’t initially auditioning so much as helping Thurm read an actor: “I wasn’t auditioning. I was helping me read an actor.” She later described her portrayal of Janet as a satire of a traditional ingénue—wide-eyed and sweet on the surface but underneath capable of being liberated. “So I read it.” Barry Bostwick added that he remembers being drawn into the moment and that Thurm’s approach effectively signaled a partnership rather than a one-off reading.

In parallel to the casting push, the film’s core performers built on a shared history. Bostwick and Sarandon already shared a friendship when the casting process began, and Thurm noted that he could sense the chemistry early on. “I remember standing up on this little stage and I thought the focus was going to be on me, and apparently, who they were really looking at is Susan, as I am, in their minds, and I didn’t know it, already had the job,” Bostwick said with a wry smile. The documentary situates this moment within the larger arc of Rocky Horror’s origins and its stubbornly unconventional path to the screen.

Rocky Horror began life as the 1973 London stage musical at the Royal Court Theatre, written by Richard O’Brien and directed by Jim Sharman. The film version would later cast stage stalwarts in the on-screen roles, with Tim Curry and O’Brien taking on Frank-N-Furter and Riff Raff, respectively, and actors like Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell, and Christopher Malcolm reprising their stage roles. The adaptation proved to be an audacious bridge from stage to screen, one that would eventually become one of the best-selling movie musicals of all time, grossing about $115 million against a budget of roughly $1 million.

The project’s release strategy in the United States was as unconventional as its content. New York studio executive Tim Deegan later recalled there was little pressure to release the picture in traditional fashion, and the plan ultimately evolved into a midnight-movie phenomenon. “There was no pressure within the company to release this picture,” Deegan told The Post at the time. Rocky Horror opened at the Waverly on April Fool’s Day in 1976, a deliberate choice aligned with its midnight-leaning audience. Frank Rich, the Post’s film critic, wrote that it was the first time a major studio opened a film in such an intimate and eccentric fashion.

Jim Sharman, the film’s director and co-writer, first encountered Rocky Horror as a late-night ritual after touring Australia. He described arriving in New York in a moment when the midnight screening culture around the movie was already taking hold. “I rolled up to the Waverly at midnight and bought a ticket, like any punter,” Sharman told The Post. “The ritual was well established by then and the interplay between the movie, the audience, the cosplay and the party seemed fun. I was relieved that the movie had found its audience.” Sharman characterized the phenomenon as a surreal homage to late-night cinema, a status that the film would never have achieved through a traditional release.

O’Brien has said one of the most valuable aspects of Rocky Horror’s evolution was its faithful adherence to a B-movie sensibility even as it gained mainstream attention. He noted that Sarandon and Bostwick’s arrival in a world they already inhabited helped the project feel authentic rather than forced. “One of the nicest things about that is Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick came across from America and into a world which we already inhabited, which was fantastic because that was exactly what was supposed to happen,” O’Brien observed. Sharman echoed the sentiment, acknowledging that the protective embrace of the low-budget, fast-shooting method contributed to the film’s lasting appeal. “Rehearsing was a dream because we all knew what we were doing, and they came in, the green virgins, and it was perfect.”

As the film turns 50, the mosaic of casting, late-night audiences, and a fearless, lo-fi production ethos are often cited as the core reasons for Rocky Horror’s enduring appeal. The documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror captures how a deliberate casting gambit, paired with a counterintuitive release strategy, helped transform a quirky stage show into a global cultural touchstone.