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The Bear Breaks All-Time Emmy Comedy Series Nomination Record "The second season of the hit FX series, which aired in June 2023, led the tally for comedy series with 23 nominations, including outstanding comedy series. It now surpasses the 22-nomination Emmy record held by NBC’s “30 Rock” since 2009. The all-time series record of 32 nominations, held by HBO’s “Game of Thrones” since 2016, remains firmly in place."
Fresh from her Emmy win for Location Casting Season One of FX’s The Bear, AJ Links has opened up her own casting agency in Chicago. Her career began over a decade ago at The Theatre School at DePaul when she accepted an internship at Paskal Rudnicke Casting upon graduation. A year later she joined the shop full time and spent the next 11 years working her way up from assistant to CD helping cast shows including FX’s Fargo, HBO’s Station Eleven, South Side, and Lovecraft Country, Showtime’s Shameless and Work in Progress, Apple TV+ The Shining Girls, and the upcoming Marvel series Ironheart, as well as many feature films including The Trial of the Chicago 7and Transformers 4.
Having so many gifted actors attracted to the project was a blessing, but it also meant working through myriad scheduling issues and tough decisions about who made the most sense for each role and who seemed most likely to mesh with the intense, intimate process involved in making The Bear. During a conversation with Vulture, the four casting directors — Bacharach, who is based in Los Angeles, and the Chicago team of Rudnicke, Mickie Paskal, and AJ Links — discussed the process of building this all-star team of guest actors, ranging from award-winning performers to esteemed Chicago culinary figures, and dropped a couple of notable names who came close to becoming part of the Bear family.
AJ Links has helped cast some impressive titles ranging from from Showtime’s Work in Progressto season four of FX’s Fargo.
Links recently received a 2023 Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Casting For A Comedy Series category for her work on FX’s The Bear. She also holds an Artios award for her work casting Lovecraft Country.
Links virtually sat down with Casting Networks to provide a window into the person behind all the credits, complete with the Sonoma County native’s top wine recommendation.
SCREEN: Your favorite casting project ever?
AJ: I’m really lucky that this question was the hardest to answer. Station Eleven stands out to me because it felt so special creatively. The showrunners were genuine and brilliant, looked you in the eye, listened, and considered. No decision was made in haste or without intention. When leadership treats a project with that amount of tenderness, everyone follows suit, and the whole process of world-building feels more like magic and less like work. It was a dream team I pinched myself to be on and a privilege to be in the room.