How to Get Cast on Heartbreak High

Heartbreak High 2.0 takes viewers back to the fictional Sydney school, where a new cohort of pupils are pulling angst-fuelled hijinks. A celebration of diverse race, class, and sexual identities, the show has been praised for not shying away from the gritty reality of playground politics.

Season 1 followed the drama-prone Amerie, who becomes a social outcast after outing the sexual escapades of her peers, and landing them all in a compulsory Sexual Literacy Tutorial course – sneeringly nicknamed “sluts.” 

Season 2 picks up with Amerie again, at the centre of another drama: Someone using the alias “Bird Psycho” has been bad-mouthing her online. She and the gang try to uncover Bird Psycho’s identity while dealing with relationship dramas – and there are several cliff-hangers to keep viewers guessing for Season 3. 

While details for the third and final season are largely under wraps, a log line issued by Netflix read: “It’s time for Hartley High’s graduating class to say ‘goodbye’ to school, and ‘hello’ to adulthood! Yet when a revenge prank goes horribly wrong, Amerie and her friends must cover up their secret or risk losing everything.” 

The casts of Seasons 1 and 2 include: 

• Ayesha Madon as Amerie Wadia
• Thomas Weatherall as Malakai Mitchell
• Bryn Chapman Parish as Spencer “Spider” White 
• Asher Yasbincek as Harper McLean
• James Majoos as Darren Rivers
• Chloe Hayden as Quinni Gallagher-Jones
• Will McDonald as Douglas “Ca$h” Piggott
• Gemma Chua-Tran as Sasha So
• Sherry-Lee Watson as Missy Beckett
• Joshua Heuston as Dusty Reid
• Brodie Townsend as Anthony “Ant” Vaughn
• Chika Ikogwe as Jojo Obah
• Rachel House as Woodsy
• Sam Rechner as Rowan Callaghan
• Kartanya Maynard as Zoe Clarke
• Angus Sampson as Voss

Several guest stars make appearances too, including a few actors reprising roles from the 1994 series, including: 

• Isabella Gutierrez as Chaka Cardenes
• Scott Major as Rivers 
• Jeremy Lindsay Taylor as Kurt Peterson
• Lara Cox as Anita 

Amanda Mitchell of Mitchell Casting is the CD responsible for casting the Heartbreak High reboot. In July 2024, weeks after Netflix announced Season 3, Mitchell Casting put out an urgent casting call on its Instagram page for 18- to 23-year-old female-presenting actors of Maori or Pacific Islander heritage to play 16-year-olds in an Australian TV series. Although the series title wasn’t mentioned, the callout met the demographic of pupils in Heartbreak High, which got the grapevines buzzing.

As with most TV shows, the casting process will likely vary from actor to actor. Leading lady Madon describes “auditioning for months” before eventually being offered the part, while Weatherall, who stars opposite her as Malakai, was cast just three weeks before filming began. With most of his cast mates already in position, he believes it was his chemistry test with Madon and Parish that sealed the deal. Weatherall recalls walking away from the video call chemistry test with the rare feeling of “I think I’ve got this.” One hour later, he got the call to say he’d landed the job. 

The good news – if you’re yet to bulk up your acting CV – is that Mitchell and her team have a reputation for giving new names a chance. “What was so special about that first season is they took a chance on a lot of first time creatives, including the actors,” Madon says. “I think there was a lot at stake for all of us in terms of proving ourselves [but] that brought a very specific type of magic to the project.”

They take their time finding the right talent too. Discussing her search for the show with the Equity Foundation podcast, Mitchell said the company auditioned over 1,500 actors for the main characters and over 5,000 for the ensemble.

In a statement issued on 4 November, Netflix announced Season 3 was currently in production, with Fremantle Australia and NewBe once again its production companies. Exact filming dates are hush-hush, but if the casting call on Mitchell Casting’s Instagram page was for Heartbreak High, filming is supposedly running from October 2024 until February 2025.

Bagging an audition for a major Netflix show like Heartbreak High is much easier if you have an agent who’s plugged into the industry. They’ll already have relationships with industry personnel involved with the show, and their name (or that of their agency) will carry weight even when putting forward actors who are currently unknown. But agent or no agent, if you respond to an open casting call with a self-tape and get a callback from the casting directors, here’s how those already involved with the show advise approaching the audition.

Madon says working on your self-confidence is one of the most important things. “If you have all the self-confidence going into something, it means more than prep in my opinion. Feeling like you can do something is the thing that’s going to get you out of your head…and able to focus on what is happening in the moment rather than second-guessing yourself.” 

Weatherall, too, thinks a large part of audition success comes from knowing “you’re clearly good enough to be there.” He reminds aspiring actors: “You’re in the room for a reason…you’re not winging it, you haven’t just been plucked out of obscurity and chucked there. The casting agent has seen something…you’re there for a purpose, and you’re always going to be your harshest critic.” 

Mitchell’s top tip for giving a good audition? Preparation. “To me, nothing beats prep,” she says. “It sounds like such an obvious thing, but it’s not just thinking about your character and the backstory, it’s also thinking about the genre and your place in the overall story.”