Kristina Bogic and Sara Boustany turned a first Zoom read into their casting as Anya Butler and Elise Zakaria in The Body. Quinn Shephard and Gina Gammell were already scouring dance schools and TikTok for the pair, but the read changed the shape of the search.
Zoom read chemistry
Quinn Shephard said, “You’d be shocked at how much chemistry you can pick up.” She added, “Something comes through in their eyes,” and, “You just feel it in your gut.” That instinct put Bogic and Boustany at the center of a coming-of-age thriller set in 2004, where a high-school dance team’s antics set off mass hysteria in their town.
For Boustany, the path was more specific than a single callback. She said she read the same scene for Anya and then for Elise, and after the audition Jennifer Venditti told her, “They think you’re Elise.” Boustany also said she read with more than twenty Anyas, which made the final pairing feel less like a standard audition run and more like a test of whether the show’s lead dynamic would click at all.
Playing Anya and Elise
Bogic said she wanted Anya to feel warm, real, and relatable. She also said Quinn and Gina initially saw Anya as quite cold, very poised and precise, and she pushed against that read: “She's not your stereotypical b*tchy popular girl.” Instead, she described Anya as someone who “has an attitude, she's a leader, but she leads with kindness.”
That adjustment matters because Anya and Elise are co-captains, so the show depends on the balance between authority and trust more than on a simple rivalry. Bogic said, “I wanted to make her feel as real and relatable as possible,” which gives the role a different center of gravity than the first pass from the creators.
Los Angeles and Netflix scale
At the premiere in Los Angeles, Bogic said, “Being on this scale with Netflix is an adjustment.” She added, “But we're all really proud, and we're here for the ride.” For a cast where many members are taking their first major role, that is the practical takeaway: the series is already functioning as a career launchpad, not just a one-off assignment.
Boustany put the working relationship even more plainly. She said, “It felt electric,” and said Bogic was one of the first people she read with. She added that Bogic says so much with her eyes, and that they were always on the same page about what a scene needed and when to talk to the directors. That kind of alignment is what lets a casting decision turn into a usable screen partnership instead of just a good audition tape.
What the show still owes viewers is the on-screen proof of how that chemistry plays in specific scenes and choreography. Based on the casting process alone, though, Bogic and Boustany were not chosen to fit a template; they were chosen because the pairing already worked, and the rest of The Body now has to live up to that read.
