Zellweger wanted the role immediately: "I loved Betty, and I've never played anybody like her before. How often do you get a chance to play somebody who changes so dramatically? The script was great: all the characters are so well-developed. After I met with Neil, I knew that Nurse Betty was going to be something special."
Golin adds, "Renee is the girl you wish you had next door. You always want to see her do well. In Nurse Betty, you're not sure that she's going to come out unscathed — you never know where Neil is going to take you...
To play the story's two hit men, LaBute wanted actors with dramatic capability and chemistry. He was concerned that the hit man archetype might seem overly familiar to filmgoers: "There had been a number of them in the last few years. It didn't make me uncomfortable, but it made me think, 'How can you find some portion of originality in that?"'
"Then, Steve Golin suggested Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock," remembers LaBute. "That changed the whole parameter of the story — and Morgan and Chris could go places I hadn't seen them go as actors."
Freeman, already acquainted with the director's work, responded positively to the script: "Primarily, I thought it had good entertainment value. A dark comedy, to be sure, but a comedy. Charlie was a very offbeat character, one I had not been offered before. That in itself had some intrigue."
Freeman was especially pleased that two African-American actors were cast in these leading roles. He comments, "Young filmmakers today are not trapped by the mindset of older generations. They just try to get the performer who they think is best suited for the job. When the rest of this country catches up to this concept in general, it will be a great world."
Chris Rock jumped at the chance to play the younger, more impulsive Wesley, opposite one of America's most accomplished actors. Further, the prospect of portraying a hit man in a dramatic context appealed to Rock. "It was the real deal. [It's] not a big deal to play a hit man in a comedy," he clarifies. Finally, Rock was "a fan of LaBute' s films" and "was dying to work with him."
LaBute found this pivotal pairing to be "a casting marriage, which works superbly. The humor in the story comes through the action, not from joke lines and funny faces. Morgan and Chris' acting make both the humor and the drama believable."
"Morgan has a great sense of reserve. Below the surface, there's a smolder there -- you know you don't want to get him angry. In this film, he gets the chance to explode at times. Chris gets to build up his intensity in this story: he's not fueling all of the humor. It's a very different role for him."
With Renee Zellweger in place, the filmmakers sought a comparably strong leading actor to play opposite her. "Like Renee, Greg Kinnear trades on a lot of good will that he has built up with audiences," comments LaBute. "Playing several sides of his character -- a soap opera actor playing a doctor -- was a tall order, but I knew he could make that leap. I also felt that Greg's likable persona would help his character's dramatic turn near the end of the film come as a surprise."
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