BWW Interviews: Legendary Casting Director David Grindrod

Hello, David, and welcome to BWW:UK. The first thing we should talk about is your involvement with the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation - can you tell us a little bit about that?

Andrew has set up this scholarship scheme, whereby we give ten scholarships to musical theatre students for the minimum of the next three years. We got it together quite quickly; we've given certain colleges the opportunity to put students forward, and at the moment we're going out to pick which kids we'd like to take the award.

What it came off, really, was the TV shows - Maria, Joseph and Oliver!, all those - and what Andrew realised when we were out on the road, training is so important to the students. Training is what they crave for, as well. Even if they didn't get on the show, we gave them the opportunity to realise this is what they want to do. So we set up the foundation and started to go forward with that. The government do give some awards, but that is so up in the air at the moment - from 2013, the colleges don't know if they're going to get those awards or not. I'm anxious to fight for that as well. 

You mentioned the TV shows - the BBC Performing Arts Fund was something that was set up and funded by money from the phone votes.

Absolutely. I was part of that committee as well. They applied for that fund, and we gave the money out - thousands - which people didn't really realise, because of the way the BBC is structured and the fact that they can't make publicity around it. A lot of people got their training funded or partially funded by that, and now that's become a hardship fund.

When you're auditioning these students, what are you looking for?

It sounds really basic, but talent. Something that I know Andrew will like; something that will be really useful for the profession; the notes I put down are "hunger", "energy", "really want it", and of course, if they need it financially I understand that. But there has to be a need to want to perform.

When you were doing the TV shows, some of the criticisms that came up around it was from people in the business saying that the focus was on narrative and making compelling TV rather than talent and training.

You'd be surprised the major arguments I had at Wembley when we first did it. We had to stop filming. "This is not the way that Andrew will want this." By the fourth series we had an amazing crew. I think people found that all those people were talented. Yes, there was a backstory if you want to call it that, but we've all got a story somewhere. What I wanted to make the most of was they were coming through for the right reasons. We weren't setting them up. We weren't trying to knock their confidence down. We're there to enhance it - they've got their dream.

You've worked very closely with Andrew over a lot of years.

I do other things as well!

Yes, I was going to say! You're well-known to a wider TV audience because of the talent shows, but obviously you work on other shows as well.

Mamma Mia!, we do that worldwide. That's been an amazing experience, to go to Australia and South Africa, all over the US and Canada, getting the shows set up cast-wise. We're just very fortunate in what we do. We're also doing Shrek in the West End, and Ghost is just opening - it's wonderful, I can't tell you. It's the third time I've worked with this team, which is nice - you have a good shorthand, and enhance what they actually want.

You started off working backstage.

I was an ASM, and a DSM - I went to LAMDA quite a few years ago, and I worked the ranks - was a company manager, and I worked through. There was a point when I didn't want to be a company manager; I did odd bits and pieces, casting understudies in plays. Then they were looking for a company manager to look after Joseph, at the London Palladium with Jason Donovan, and they came to me. I said, "OK, I'll do it, but I'd like to go back into the offices again to do the general managing side."

So I set up big school choir competitions, the show was a huge success, I moved into the offices, and I think Andrew must have seen something in me. When we did the Second Company of Sunset Boulevard, he said, "You cast it." It's a ball you have to grab and run with. Then you come to a point in your life where things change - I said to him I'd like to leave, but can I take your shows with me and open up my own office? So that's how that happened. It's been great to work on the variety of shows I have. That's the fun thing in our business. He's given me the springboard to do other stuff.

What do you think makes a good casting director?

That's a good question! A sympathy for an actor - you have to understand an actor and what they go through. I couldn't do what they do - to come into a room and sing a song, they have five minutes to show off their wares, and in the end they might not be right, then they have to learn rejection. We want them to get the job - that's easier for us, we can tick them off the list. We can point them in the right direction and help them along the way, and become friends in the end.

Yes, I was going to ask, do you follow people's careers through?

Oh yes. Absolutely. Even more with the scholarship stuff. We're very proud of the people we've found and seeing how they've gone on and done other things - just to keep working, really, because the business is tough.

Even TV viewers follow performers through because they feel they have an investment in them after voting for them.

It's great. You feel so proud of them and seeing how they grow. Some people flow with the pressure and others crumble - it's a hard life, which I don't think people realise.

David Grindrod Associates have cast West End shows including Ghost, Shrek, Love Never Dies and the soon-to-open Crazy For You at the Open Air Theatre.

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