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Summer 2026
A woman with long brown hair stands before a hanging microphone in a recording studio. She is smiling with her hands placed on a brown wood-grain table. A woman with long brown hair stands before a hanging microphone in a recording studio. She is smiling with her hands placed on a brown wood-grain table.
Photography by Keith Barraclough
Summer 2026 Take This Job & Love It

Tuned in to Talent

Chelsea Adams ’07 finds the perfect voices for stories at Audible through a deep pool of sources.

Written by:
Adam Grybowski

Chelsea Adams ’07 knows watching movies with her can be no fun. Unable to lose herself in the industry’s dream factory, Adams instead watches the latest from Hollywood and beyond with zealous purpose, scrutinizing every performer on screen — from leads to bit players to complete unknowns.

“I’m deeply annoying to watch a movie with,” she says, laughing at herself. “I’m always scrolling IMDbPro like, Oh, who is that fourth guest-starring actor that no one else notices?”

The associate director of casting and talent at Audible, Adams consumes an inordinate amount of entertainment — not just movies but television, TikTok, comedy shows and live theater — in her never-ending quest to identify talent for the narration of audiobooks and original audio content.

“Part of the work in my profession is seeing everything I can get my hands on,” she says, noting that all of that activity has produced an “internal Rolodex that is thousands and thousands of names long.”

That rich archive, supplemented with opinions and advice gleaned from friends, family, colleagues, and trusted industry contacts, serves as a guidepost when new projects land on her desk.

Her eye for talent has paid dividends. Years before Glen Powell’s breakout role in Top Gun: Maverick made him a star, Adams spotted something in his performance in a little-discussed romantic comedy on Netflix called Set It Up. She eventually cast Powell to narrate 10 Days, an Audible Original about an undrafted basketball player’s surprise call-up to the Philadelphia 76ers. The series got a major windfall later that year when Top Gun: Maverick became the year’s highest-grossing film.

“I thought Powell was special and that he was going places,” Adams says, “and when we had a chance to cast him in a low-stakes way, I had a feeling that it would pay off for us.”

Her talent-spotting instincts also inform her casting strategy when working with established stars. When Billy Crystal and Audible collaborated on Crystal’s passion project, Have a Nice Day, Adams relished filling out the supporting cast with Darrell Hammond and Rachel Dratch from Saturday Night Live, Christopher Jackson from Hamilton, and Auliʻi Cravalho from Disney’s Moana.

Her success with Have a Nice Day illustrates how Adams conceptualizes casting as a logic puzzle. Such an approach first crystallized for her as a Lawrenceville student when she produced WinterFest, the School’s student-directed performing arts festival. She had to coordinate 15 one-act plays over a month, with roughly 70 teenagers directing and performing in multiple shows each night.

“This was a complex thing to put together that required a mishmash of different skills,” Adams says. “You had to be organized and balance lots of logistical considerations but also manage relationships. You had to understand artistically if everything was getting where it needed to be. All of these skills are what I would go on to use in my career. It was a huge unlocking moment for me.”

Most people outside the industry don’t even know that this is a job. But there’s real joy in honing this craft. Every iteration, I get a little better at it.

Chelsea Adams ’07

A double major in theater and political science at Northwestern, Adams knew early that performance would be central to her life. She caught the theater bug at age 10. After spotting a classmate onstage in a community theater production, she realized performing was possible for her, too. By the time she enrolled at Lawrenceville, she had performed in dozens of local productions.

At Lawrenceville, she continued to perform while growing aware that acting wasn’t quite right for her.

“By that time, I knew I loved theater, but being on stage front and center was not for me,” she says. “I’m a perfectionist, and I wanted to find a space in entertainment where I could truly excel. I started looking at other options where I might find my place in this industry.”

That search led Adams to McCarter Theatre in Princeton, where she worked as an associate producer, developing the skills that would eventually take her to Audible in 2017. She continues to find deep satisfaction in the craft of casting audio.

“Most people outside the industry don’t even know that this is a job,” Adams says. “But there’s real joy in honing this craft. Every iteration, I get a little better at it. You’re always trucking toward a destination, and when it’s done, you move to the next. It keeps it fresh. There’s always a new logic puzzle to solve and a chance to get better at solving them.”

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Adam Grybowski is a freelance writer based in Lawrence Township.