This story was the winner of our “the way we work” essay contest in collaboration with Lux. This story was co-published and supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project’s James Ledbetter Fund.
It was dark when I reached hour ten of casting the babies. The auditions came one after the other in a steady loop. “Nice eyes,” I said, nodding to the screen, “But the head. Is the shape right?”
My art director shrugged. We didn’t have to worry about offending the talent—none of them could hear us. They were in Canada, delivered to us on a large monitor. Babies in the United States are unionized and, therefore, less budget-friendly. So we usually outsourced the babies—casting in Mexico, Poland, or in this case, Toronto, where actors under two were less likely to have a SAG card. Our advertising agency was tasked with the almost religious duty of selecting Gerber babies, and I had been involved in that process for four years, ever since I joined the agency in 2018.
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