Thora Birch was cast for the project shortly after she finished filming "American Beauty" (1999) and before she became a breakthrough actress once it was released; she chose to play the positive-minded empress Savina to get herself out of the somber psyche she put herself in for her role in "American Beauty". Birch, Whalin, and Kristen Wilson was cast before the start of principal photography. Mark Leahy, a producer who was involved in the writing for a year-and-a-half working on revisions of Solomon, Cartwright and Lilien's original script that were mostly rejected, was the one who conceived the cast being as ethnically diverse as possible; as he explained, "I thought this film had (and has) a chance to really be something special, and knowing that I hated the thought of a bunch of kids watching a great story in another world-where there are only white people." Leahy originally wrote the elf Liana (later named Norda) to be a black elf, but after contention from his peers, he changed her race to Asian; she was a black elf in the final cut. Leahy wrote what would become Snails as an African-America half-orc in his versions, although this was considered poor taste by his colleagues. He also wrote all members of the mage empire to be Asians. Wilson, after reading the script, wanted to play Norda specifically due to the character's enigma; as she elaborated, "her position within the royal court world...the power that she has, certainly psychologically ..and she's a mystic...and then she's this incredible warrior. And she doesn't really let on too much.. but you can look in her eyes.. and you can see that she's not somebody to be trifled with." In fact, she was so committed to being cast as the elf that when calling the casting director, Wilson demanded to meet Solomon in person and tell him, "I'm Norda." The meeting happened, with Solomon and the other producers agreeing with Wilson. The director claimed to have cast Wilson as Norda for the same reasons she like the character: "She's serious and mysterious and very, very cool [...] But when you look at her she doesn't look like some sort of prosthetic elf, she looks like she's another race. When you see her in the film, she's got these wild eyes, this wild exotic look, and she looks like a Dark Elf, which is great, because it's what she's supposed to be."