Meantime, local casting director Liz Marks, whose company has managed the extras since filming began earlier this fall, has quit this part of the project. She will continue to fill the remaining speaking parts, she says, many of them with local actors.
Mary Nelson, spokesperson for the Virginia Film Office, told Style that she had not heard any complaints or that Marks had quit as casting director. Several phone calls to HBO were not returned by press time.
Marks says she’s had some “concerns” about how extras have been treated, but stops short of commenting on whether they’ve been treated poorly.
“I’ve never ever quit a movie or project,” Marks says, acknowledging that production of “Angels” has been very “stressful.” Marks describes the movie and HBO as “wonderful,” but insists she had to “back off” from coordinating the extras because her time spent on the set had become excessive.
White and her husband, Richard, have worked as extras on a handful of movies filmed in Richmond.
White says she was warned by some of the movie’s production assistants to expect long hours, possibly 12- to 14-hour days. What she didn’t expect, she says, was that those days would stretch much, much longer — up to 18 hours plus. Extras get paid $75 a day. Only union members get overtime.
White says extras were forced to spend hours unnecessarily standing in the cold, being trapped in places like balconies without bathroom breaks and forced to stay clad in heavy uniforms for hours on end. There was no food for extras either, she says. Conditions were so bad that some extras sneaked away to go home, not caring that they wouldn’t get paid.
“People are not slaves even if you’re only getting paid $75,” White says.
Josh Wroniewiecz, 28, who worked as an extra playing a police officer in the film, says he has heard many complaints. Specifically, he says, that the production is disorganized. The shortest day Wroniewiecz has worked has been 13 hours, he says.
He doesn’t plan to go back. “They called me but I’m not going,” he says. “It’s not worth it for the money.”
— Brandon Walters
