Casting the protagonist of High Heels and Hoodoo turned out to be tougher than we thought. On the surface, Tiffany seems to be a typical blonde bimbo, so we wanted an actress with a certain look. But there’s a lot more to Tiffany than meets the eye – she shares her nanna’s core of steel, so we needed an actress who could convey Tiffany’s cunning determination running beneath the surface. We weren’t having much luck and were starting to worry as our shoot date loomed closer and closer.
Then Brian remembered one of the shorts we’d seen during movie night at Concentrix – The Adult Who Cried Wolf. One of the characters was played by Johanna Jowett, who we’d also seen previously in the first SC Production Grant winning film The Four Children of Tander Welch (which was produced by Matt Sefick, our 2nd AD for Saying Goodbye). Brian had actually worked with Johanna years before in a series of commercials he made for the SC lottery (you can see the lizard man mania here), and he thought she’d be perfect for the part.
So we got in touch with our casting director Richard Futch, and he contacted Johanna’s agency about the role. Johanna sent an audition with two takes on the character of Tiffany – one very ditzy and one with that underlying grit we were looking for. So just in a nick of time, we’ve found our Tiffany.
In addition to crazy commercials and small budget indies, Johanna has appeared on the big screen in Life as We Know It, and on the TV shows One Tree Hill and The Riches, as well as starring in the series 7th Street Theater. Johanna is like a chameleon, different in every role we’ve seen her in, so we can’t wait to see what she brings to this character and are happy that our trio of strong southern women is now complete.