Yvette has an extensive knowledge of local acting talent and a broad network of contacts within the industry, as well as the tools to search beyond represented talent to find award-winning performances from non-actors within various communities.

Brand new talent discovered by Yvette includes: Wayne Hapi who played Ariki in The Dark Horse, opposite Cliff Curtis and James Rolleston, earning a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the 2014 MOA awards. She was also responsible for the casting of The Eastern Knights (the children in The Dark horse) from various Kura across Tāmaki Makaurau. The three lead children in multi-award winning short film Lambs were all cast exculsively from schools in Porirua and Wainuiomata. And after a successful viral campaign, 2000+ applications and over 330 auditions nationwide, Gloria Popata from South Auckland earned her role as the lead actress in Jackie Van Beek’s Feature The Inland Road -in which Yvette also cast Logie winner Chelsie Preston Crayford and Scotland’s 2015 BAFTA winner David Elliot.

Yvette’s credits include Feature film Waru in which eight female Māori directors each contributed a ten minute vignette, presented as a continuous shot in real time, that unfolds around the tangi of a small boy. The vignettes also feature eight female Māori lead characters and a largely Māori cast, it’s packed with powerful performances. The standout performance being Acacia Hapi, who was actually one of the many talented girls discovered by Yvette on her nationwide Casting trip a couple years prior for The Inland Road. 

Early 2020 saw the release of two more Features for Yr Casting; Action-comedy The Legend of Baron Toa which was well received among enthusiastic Pacific audiences and Guns Akimbo starring Daniel Radcliffe that unfortunately released within days of Covid-19 lockdowns and is deserving of a much bigger action loving audience.

The NZ Gang drama Savage is available on NEON now. It is Sam Kelly’s debut feature, starring Jake Ryan, John Tui, Lotima Pome’e and Olly Presling, as well as an array of memorable non-actors in supporting roles from extensive community casting (2000+ auditons) nationwide.

Yvette completed the epic gibberish casting of New Zealand-Australian co-op film Nude Tuesday, Directed by Armagan Ballantyne and starring Jermaine Clement. A hilarious, absurd comedy which shot primarily in the picturesque Queenstown-Lakes District of the Otago region. Nude Tuesday will be showing in cinemas nationwide from June 16th 2022.

Yvette cast the TVNZ television series The Panthers, based on true events – a primarily Pacific Island cast, a mixture of both professional actors and talented members from the community.

Filming is complete for Princess of Chaos, which emerged from last year’s Asian and Pacific People’s Feature-Length development initiative. It is a telefeature adaption of Bevan Chuang’s true life story centered around her role in a political scandal.

Of note so far in 2022, Yvette has cast the second season of Good Grief as well as Feature film Kāinga, which following Waru and Vai is the third anthology film from BSAG. Written and/or directed by Kiwi-Asian women spanning heritage from Indigenous Aotearoa, China, India, Iran, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, Kāinga explores different facets of Asian immigrant women’s experience navigating the thorny terrain of making and being at home in Aotearoa New Zealand.

With a passion for championing emerging, unknown and established actors alike, Yvette is fully committed to finding the right talent for any given casting brief. She is able to offer a casting plan for any size budget, and the energy to search up and down the country beyond the obvious routes.

Yvette’s approachable personality, endless patience and experienced feedback has been highly praised by the Producers and Directors she has worked with. Due to a severe allergy for schmoozing all work to date has been generated exclusively by repeat business, word of mouth and from the recommendations of past collaborators.

More about Yvette