How did Steven Spielberg pick the actors who played his parents in ‘The Fabelmans?’

Casting a movie is like doing an intricate puzzle with many complex pieces. One has to find just the right fit and all those pieces have to work together in harmony. In the case of Steven Spielberg’s newest movie The Fabelmans, the already difficult job was intensified by the highly personal subject matter. In this film, Spielberg tells the story of his own personal coming of age and relationship with his real-life parents. In the film Michelle Williams plays Mitzi Fabelman, a character based on Spielberg’s mother Leah Adler and Paul Dano plays Burt Fabelman, a character based on Spielberg’s father Arnold Spielberg. In a recent Variety article Speilberg opened up about casting these pivotal roles.

A traditional casting session typically consists of pre-selected actors receiving a scene and performing an audition for the role. There may even be a couple of rounds of this known as callbacks and chemistry reads. When actors get to a certain level such as Williams and Dano, they skip these preliminary steps. Their previous bodies of work and intimate conversations with Spielberg served as their auditions instead.

Spielberg spoke to both Dano and Williams via Zoom. Each dialogue was a deep heart to heart that convinced Spielberg Dano and Williams were the correct actors for the role. “Beyond their bodies of work, I just had a kind of familiarity with Paul and with Michelle,” Spielberg mused. 

Dano is known for playing dark, outsider-type characters such as the Riddler in 2022’s The Batman. This role is a chance for him to show his softer side. Because of this when casting Dano, Spielberg, who was a fan of his work also relied on industry friend’s reports about Paul’s real life personality. These industry friends believed it matched Burt/Arnold’s temperament. 

Dano was nervous and excited when his agent told him Spielberg wanted to have a zoom session with him. He told Variety he shaved and put in his contacts for the meeting, something he rarely does. “I was like, ‘I’ve got to look good’ And I remember sitting down at the computer, and suddenly just everything went calm.” Spielberg told him about the film and Dano recalls, “My heart did leap. I just could see it.”

Spielberg also saw Dano as his father. He attempted to go to the meeting with an open mind. “I certainly didn’t want to come on my first meeting with Paul and be a little too familiar,” Spielberg stated. “But there was something so evocative of my dad. Ten minutes after the Zoom, I was choking. I was holding back my emotion.”

He had a similar encounter with Williams. Spielberg was especially impressed with William’s work as Cindy Heller in the 2011 film Blue Valentine, which earned her an Oscar nomination. Williams dressed up for the meeting in a Peter Pan collar dress which unintentionally invoked Leah Adler. Spielberg explained the project and role to Williams who quickly caught on to what was happening.

“As it was dawning on me what was happening, I had to stop and ask him, ‘Wait, are you asking me to play your mother?’ ” Williams recalls. “And he said, ‘Yes, that is what I’m asking.’ To not only be asked to play a part in one of his movies, but to be asked to play his beloved mother … it’s like being taken inside somebody’s heart, to be trusted with this most personal material.”

Like Dano, Williams was also excited for her initial meeting with Spielberg. When she was first starting out she used to say she would know she made it when the legendary director came calling. Williams stated: “His name was a refrain that I would use, and I would say to my best friend, Busy [Philipps], ‘Oh, when is Steven Spielberg going to call me?’ ”

For Williams the call was worth waiting for. While this is a coming of age story, it also deals with the role of women in America in the ’60s, a period when women were questioning if they could be more than a housewife and mother. Williams is delighted at the way Spielberg handled this through her character.  “They let her live as a woman, not just as a mother. Everything that she did, she did completely. I mean, I’ve never come across a part like this,” Williams gushed.

Although sadly both Leah Adler and Arnold Spielberg have died, they were excited for this film. They asked for it to be made. Spielberg remembers: “They were actually nagging me, ‘When are you going to tell that story about our family, Steve?’ And so this was something they were very enthusiastic about.”

Spielberg hopes that this film reminds people about the important connection between a parent and a child. He wants children to remember that while it is easy and even good to put their parents on a pedestal, they are also complex, imperfect human beings in their own right.

“My life with my mom and dad taught me a lesson, which I hope this film in a small way imparts,” he states. “Which is, when does a young person in a family start to see his parents as human beings? In my case, because of what happened between the ages of 7 and 18, I started to appreciate my mom and dad not as parents but as real people.”