How to Get Cast in The Best of Us (9/12) on Paramount+

Updated October 2026.

The most castable thing you own this fall might be sitting in your driveway.

If it’s a car from 2005 or earlier, Paramount+’s new limited series The Best of Us will pay you $231 for an eight-hour day to stand next to it on a New York street — and pay the car another $250 for showing up. The series is recreating New York as it looked in 2001, block by block, and between now and December it needs hundreds of background actors — and their period cars — to do it.

Open casting calls — live on Project Casting right now

The Best of Us is casting background in New York through Grant Wilfley Casting. Verified live calls:

• First responders — men for a disaster-site scene; fittings in Brooklyn through Friday October 23, shoots Monday October 26, Tuesday October 27, Thursday October 29 and Monday November 2; $187 for 10 hours plus a makeup bump
• Pedestrians with cars from 2005 or earlier — SAG-AFTRA $231/8, non-union $187/10, plus a $250 period car bump; dates run October through December
• Sanitation workers — Staten Island, two matching days; union $231/8, non-union $187/10, plus $100 if makeup is applied

Browse all live casting calls on Project Casting

The Best of Us at a glance

The Best of Us is a six-episode limited series for Paramount+, produced by Paramount Television Studios and SISTER. If you’ve seen it listed as “9/12” — including on this site’s own job board — that’s the same show: 9/12 was the working title, and Paramount+ retitled the series The Best of Us ahead of its release. Search either name; the casting underneath is identical.

The series dramatizes the decade-long legal war to secure nearly $1 billion in compensation for the first responders who fell gravely ill after working at Ground Zero. Jeremy Strong plays Jason Smith, the class-action lawyer at the center of the case. Andrea Riseborough plays Molly, the wife of an affected officer who turns to Smith; Barry Pepper plays Coach, a former NYPD officer diagnosed with leukemia who becomes the public face of the lawsuit. Katherine Waterston, Neal Huff, Gaby Hoffmann — as FDNY firefighter and activist Kathleen McCormick — and Sky Yang round out the principal cast.

The series is written and directed by Tobias Lindholm, with Frank Pugliese co-writing; both executive produce alongside Strong. Production began in New York in September 2026 and runs through December, with the premiere scheduled for 2027. Every background call currently open is for the New York shoot — this production has exactly one casting location, and it’s this one.

What the casting board tells you: the numbers behind the calls

Three calls for this production have posted to Project Casting in 29 days — September 22, October 6, and October 20 — and together they map how this production actually hires:

• One rate card, everywhere. All three calls pay the identical two-tier scale: $231 for 8 hours for SAG-AFTRA members, $187 for 10 hours for non-union performers. Learn those two numbers and you know the pay on every background call this production will post.
• The bumps are where the money moves. A period car earns $250 — more than a non-union performer’s entire day rate. Dust-and-ash makeup adds $100 when applied. The Brooklyn fitting for the first-responder call pays $46.75 for two and a half hours, before a single scene is shot.
• This casting moves at news speed. The first-responder call posted on October 20, and its fittings started in Brooklyn that same week — Tuesday through Friday — with matching shoot days on Monday October 26, Tuesday October 27, Thursday October 29, and Monday November 2. There was no month-long runway. When this office needs people, it needs them this week.

Filming runs through December, and the story spans a decade of New York life — courtrooms, city streets, municipal workplaces — so the reasonable expectation is more calls in this same shape: period-specific, size-specific, and posted days before the work, not weeks.

Who is doing the casting: Grant Wilfley Casting

Background casting on all three live calls is handled by Grant Wilfley Casting — GWCI — the largest background casting operation in New York and the office behind the street crowds of a generation of New York productions. On a series like this, the principal cast is set separately; the door that is actually open to you is GWCI’s, and it opens constantly.

Read their notices closely and you can see exactly how this office works:

• Measurements are a filter, not a formality. The sanitation-worker call specifies height 5’9″ to 6’1″ and shoe size 9 to 13. If you are 6’3″, you are not “close enough” — the wardrobe rack is built to those numbers.
• Your photos have an expiration date. The same call requires a nonprofessional selfie and a full-body shot taken within the past week, in plain light, with no editing, no filters, no hats, no glasses. GWCI casts what you look like today, because the fitting is this week and the shoot is next week.
• Availability is packaged. Roles come with matching days — shoot days that must be worked as a set, fittings matched to specific shoot dates. The office is not booking a person for a day; it is booking a person for a matched set of days.

It is the same operating system used by the biggest background offices in every major market — the exact-spec, standing-pool model that keeps shows like Chicago Fire staffed season after season. Learn to work the way GWCI works — current photos, exact sizes, total availability — and you become reusable. Reusable is what turns one day of background work into twenty.

Which roles are open — and the realistic way in

First responders (Brooklyn; shoots October 26–November 2). Men to portray first responders at a disaster site. This is the most physically specific call of the three: performers may be covered in artificial dust and ash — the notice names the materials, cellulose, PVA and vegetable starch — on the body and face. The fitting pays $46.75; shoot days pay $187 for 10 hours at the non-union tier, plus a makeup bump when the dust is applied. If you have real first-responder or military experience, say so in your submission — offices casting disaster-site scenes read those lines first.

Pedestrians with period cars (NYC metro; dates through December). The widest door on the board. Any adult local to the New York/New Jersey area who can portray a 2001-era pedestrian — and the car is the casting call inside the casting call. A vehicle from 2005 or earlier earns its own $250 bump on top of your $231 or $187 day rate. Everyday sedans of the era are the brief; the production is dressing entire blocks, not hunting for classics.

Sanitation workers (Staten Island; two matching days). Men, 18+, 5’9″–6’1″, shoe size 9–13, working in Tyvek coveralls with light dust-and-ash makeup. Union $231/8, non-union $187/10, plus $100 if makeup is applied. The role is covered by a SAG-AFTRA collective bargaining agreement with a preference-of-employment provision, and union members submit with their member ID and good standing confirmed.

No principal or speaking roles are on offer through these calls — those were cast before cameras rolled. The realistic play is exactly what’s posted: get into GWCI’s rotation on a prestige limited series that films for three more months, and be the person whose photos, sizes, and availability are never the problem.

How to apply, step by step

1. Complete your Project Casting profile with this-week photos. Not your best headshot — a plain-light selfie and a full-body shot, unedited, exactly as GWCI’s notices demand. The full mechanics of a background-ready profile are in our step-by-step guide to getting cast as an extra.
2. Put your real sizes everywhere they’re asked. Height, weight, shirt, pants, shoe. On size-specified calls, these fields are the audition.
3. Apply to the specific call, not the show in general. Each role carries its own dates and requirements — the first-responder call books a fitting and a matched set of shoot dates. Apply only to dates you can fully keep.
4. Declare your union status accurately. SAG-AFTRA members in good standing say so, with member ID where the call asks for it; non-union performers are explicitly eligible on all three calls. Never blur this — the two tiers pay differently and the office verifies.
5. Flag your assets in the submission. A period car, with photos of the car as the call requires. Real first-responder or military experience. Comfort with dust-and-ash makeup and Tyvek suits. Assets are what lift a submission out of the pile.
6. Have your I-9 documents ready. Every call requires valid identification for federal employment verification on set. If your paperwork takes a week to locate, you are not bookable on a call that fits tomorrow.
7. Hold the matching days. If you’re booked for the sanitation-worker pair or the first-responder set, those dates are a package. A conflict on day two unbooks day one.

Five things that get you rebooked by this office

1. Answer fast. A call that posts Monday fits on Tuesday. The performers who work this show are the ones who replied while the notice was still new.
2. Look like your photos. GWCI’s one-week photo rule exists because people arrive looking like their 2019 selves. Arrive looking like your submission and you’ll be trusted with the closer positions.
3. Treat the fitting as part of the job. It’s paid, it’s brief, and it’s where the office learns whether you’re low-maintenance. Low-maintenance is the whole currency of background casting.
4. Respect the period. 2001 New York: nothing on your wrist, in your pockets, or in your hair that breaks the era. The car owners already understand this — their vehicles passed the same test.
5. Remember it’s a three-month production. The performer who works a pedestrian day in October, cleanly and quietly, is the name the office reaches for when the street and courtroom scenes stack up in November and December — the busiest stretch of New York’s fall production calendar.

Open casting calls — one more look before you go

• First responders — fittings through Friday October 23 in Brooklyn; shoots October 26, 27, 29 and November 2; $187/10 plus makeup bump
• Pedestrians with cars from 2005 or earlier — $231/8 SAG-AFTRA, $187/10 non-union, $250 car bump; dates through December
• Sanitation workers — Staten Island, two matching days; $231/8 union, $187/10 non-union, $100 makeup bump

The bottom line

The Best of Us is the rare background opportunity with a long runway and a transparent rate card: three months of filming, the same $231/$187 scale on every call, and an office that hires in volume every week. Get your profile current, apply to the call that matches your measurements — or your car — and keep your October-through-December availability honest.

Start on Project Casting: create or update your free profile, apply to the live calls above, and then check the board weekly — this production posts its needs days before it needs them, and the performers who are ready are the ones who work.