In a suite high above Columbus Circle, New York, Rob LaPlante is looking for next season's breakout TV star. There is no agent hovering nearby, no technical crew, just LaPlante, his assistant and a digital video camera, auditioning Laura Fluor, a car saleswoman from Monmouth County, New Jersey.
"Let's talk about the sharks," LaPlante, the casting producer of The Apprentice, said, referring to Fluor's colleagues on the showroom floor.
"Car salesmen are not known for their gentility," Fluor acknowledges demurely, before happily relating a recent donnybrook with a co-worker who accused her of poaching a client.
LaPlante is clearly pleased with Fluor's moxie. But for Fluor to be cast in the second season of The Apprentice this fall, she will have to make it through six rounds of cuts, two extensive questionnaires, a medical exam, an intelligence test and the kind of background check usually reserved for secret agents.
The casting of reality shows, once an intuitive, on-the-fly endeavor, has become much more of a science, with its own growing set of protocols and rituals. Several producers have hired psychologists to help them with the vetting process. And to avoid the unscripted scandals that could run afoul of the decency standards of an increasingly agitated public and the Federal Communications Commission, both producers and networks are investing more time and money into systematically investigating their contestants' backgrounds.
All the due diligence is not surprising. The reality genre, viewed not so long ago as a somewhat tawdry sideline, has become a main event for the networks. With few new scripted shows, particularly comedies, connecting in a meaningful way with audiences, and the likes of American Idol, Survivor and The Simple Life thriving, the networks are increasingly leaning on the reality genre for both ratings and profits.
The Apprentice -- with its majestic views of the New York skyline and lingering shots of the show's other superstructure, Donald J. Trump's hair -- is built on a seemingly can't-miss concept, a seductive weave of aspiration and Darwinism. But to make it one of the most-watched and most-profitable shows on NBC, LaPlante and his staff must first winnow at least a quarter of a million applicants down to 16 potential apprentices the masses will adopt as their own. In reality programming, the cast is the thing.
"These are the people who are the narrators of our show," LaPlante said. "They have to look into the camera and be believable and interesting."
At 28, LaPlante is already a veteran, having honed his casting skills on the progenitors of the reality show trend, MTV's The Real World and Road Rules.
His talent: finding regular people who, trapped in artificial constructions with cameras rolling, are abnormally interesting. He is not precisely looking for next year's Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, the pot-stirrer of the first season who antagonized fellow cast members with her constant carping and enthusiastic back-stabbing.
But he uses the research results, opinions of others, mock exercises, and finally, his gut, to decide who he wants audiences to learn to hate or love.
In this new kind of TV drama, the reality contestant serves as muse, actor, narrator and, every so often, punch line.
"If film is a director's medium, and television drama is a writer's medium, reality TV is without question a casting director's medium," said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of TV and popular culture at Syracuse University.
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