said she would take the role but only if the movie could be shot in Rome, where she was living. That posed too many problems, so Friedkin looked next to Anne Bancroft. She was also willing but only if production could start after she gave birth; Friedkin could not wait nine months. Jane Fonda, next on the list, purportedly derided the film and turned it down. Blatty suggested his friend Shirley MacLaine for the part, but Friedkin was hesitant to cast her, given her lead role in another possession film, The Possession of Joel Delaney, two years before. After meeting Carol Burnett at a party, Friedkin believed she had the range beyond her comic television persona, and Blatty agreed, but the studio was not so eager to have her in the role. Ellen Burstyn received the part after she phoned Friedkin and emphatically stated that she was "destined" to play Chris, discussing her own Catholic upbringing and later rejection of it. Studio head Ted Ashley vigorously opposed casting her, not only telling Friedkin that he would do so over his dead body, but dramatizing that opposition by making Friedkin walk over him as he lay on the floor, then grabbing the director's leg and telling him he would come back from the dead if necessary to keep Friedkin from doing so. However, no other alternatives emerged, and Ashley relented. With Burstyn now set in the part, Friedkin received a surprise return call from Jason Miller whom he had talked to after a performance of his play That Championship Season about the lapsed Catholicism in it, as background for the film, and left him. He had read a copy of the novel Friedkin left him, and told the director "[Karras] is me". Miller had had a Catholic education, and had studied to be a Jesuit priest himself for three years at Catholic University of America (also in Washington) until experiencing a spiritual crisis, as Karras does at the beginning of the story. Friedkin thanked him for his interest but told him Keach had already been signed. Miller, who had done some stage acting but had never been in a film, asked to be given a screen test. Friedkin had the playwright and Burstyn do the scene where Chris tells Karras she thinks Regan might be possessed. Afterwards, he had Burstyn interview Miller about his life with the camera focusing on him