Add another project to the increasingly long list of Hollywood movies and TV shows shooting in Pittsburgh.
“Cha Cha Real Smooth,” a movie from writer-director Cooper Raiff who will also star alongside Dakota Johnson (“Fifty Shades of Grey”), will begin shooting here, Pittsburgh Film Office director Dawn Keezer confirmed to the Post-Gazette.
“It’s going to be a great, fun feature,” she said. “And we’re going to keep putting people back to work.”
Raiff’s breakout movie “S—-house” won the grand jury prize at 2020’s canceled South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas. “Cha Cha Real Smooth” will follow a bar mitzvah party host who “strikes up a friendship with a mother and her autistic daughter,” according to its IMDB plot description.
Lawrenceville-based Nancy Mosser Casting on Friday sent out a casting call for paid core extras for “Cha Cha Real Smooth.” The film is “seeking kids ages 11-14 and adults ages 18-plus to portray bar and bat mitzvah guests,” according to a Mosser press release.
“We’re so excited to see Pittsburgh so busy,” Mosser casting director Katie Shenot told the Post-Gazette. “It’s really thrilling to see all the work coming through and continuing to get all our people in front of the camera.”
Extras for “Cha Cha Real Smooth” need to be available for 8-10 weekdays between Aug. 12 and Sept. 11 for filming in Tarentum and Pittsburgh, according to the casting call. There will be a studio teacher on set for kids who miss school for the shoot. A guardian must be present at all times for child actors, but siblings who aren’t working are not allowed on set.
Despite Hollywood and major unions recently easing COVID-19 safety protocols on movie and TV sets, there are still safety measures in place. Extras for the film must be able to take a COVID-19 test in Tarentum ahead of their scheduled shoot date and tests are required even for people who are fully vaccinated.
Extras who would like to be in “Cha Cha Real Smooth” should email mosserextras@gmail.com with the subject line “Core Mitzvah.” Include a “waist up and full-length shot in your mitzvah looks,” name, age, location, phone number, size information, any conflicts in the specified filming window, acknowledgement that a child might miss school and the “vaccination status of everyone submitting,” according to the casting call.
By the time “Cha Cha Real Smooth” starts filming, Showtime series “American Rust” will either have already wrapped or be close to finishing its Pittsburgh-area production. Amazon Prime Video series “A League of Their Own” and Billy Porter’s feature directorial debut “What If?” are currently shooting throughout Western Pennsylvania, and the IMDB TV series “Sprung” will start later this summer.
Mosser has also been handling extras casting for “What If?”.
“I just love working on features,” Shenot said. “For me, I just like working with the directors and having their visions coming to life with two totally different scripts. It’s always fun to flex new muscles and find new background for different shows.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: July 26, 2021, 1:00 p.m.
