Gracie McGonigal: Defying the Industry Standard

Since her debut, West End rising star Gracie McGonigal has gone from strength to strength and is now in the centre of the world's attention on screen, with her milestone casting as Hazel in the fourth season of Netflix’s 'Bridgerton'. We hear her reflect on the significance of the role, noting the production's inclusive approach to disability. This television debut marks a pivotal shift in her career, offering a broader platform for her advocacy for authentic representation within the entertainment industry.

During our interview with Gracie McGonigal, we explored her theatrical roots, as she continues her run as Red Riding Hood in the Bridge Theatre’s acclaimed revival of Into the Woods. We also discussed her earlier work as Susanna Walcott in the National Theatre’s production of The Crucible and her relationship with director Lindsay Turner who she recently reunited with on The Little Foxes. Gracie reflected on the technical contrasts between the rigorous, repetitive nature of live theatre and the fast-paced, intuitive demands of a major television set. Throughout the interview, she emphasized that while she is an advocate for disabled performers, her primary goal remains the pursuit of complex, diverse roles that challenge traditional industry casting standards.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Grazy McGonigal, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Yeah, so um I feel like the latest season of Bridgeton, you know, has been completely gobbled up by all of the fans of the show. Um, how does it feel to be part of a show that you know everyone is talking about?

SPEAKER_02 0:41

I mean, it's amazing. I mean, I've I've been a big fan of Bridgeton for a very long time. So it kind of feels really surreal and strange to be part of the buzz. I think my algorithms on Instagram and stuff, they can't tell whether I'm a super fan or if I'm in the show because it doesn't know what to show me at the moment. It's just all pictures of my face, and I have to log off at the moment. It's a bit crazy, but it's good.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Oh, amazing. Yeah, I mean, how long ago was it when you filmed it and how's it has it been strange seeing it all out there now in the after filming, you know, from back then?

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Yeah, I mean, we finished filming just under a year ago now, but to be honest, it feels like just yesterday. It's kind of strange how time has passed. But it's also been something that I've been keeping under wraps since sort of mid-2024. So it definitely has felt like a bit of a burden relieved for me to sort of finally share it. I haven't been able to chat about it at all. Um, so it's nice seeing it sort of come to fruition because it sometimes you film these things and and you don't see it and it gets locked away, and who knows? Who knows what takes they're gonna use? So it can sometimes be quite stressful. But I'm glad it's all out and I've watched it now.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, I mean it's amazing to see how Bridgeton has really taken off since it first came out. Um, why do you think this show has you know really um galvanized an audience today?

SPEAKER_02 2:03

I think because the people yearn for a time gone by. I think people people yearn for that romanticy period drama, phone-free life. I I know how I I feel. I feel like every everywhere I look online at the moment, it's everybody having their analogue year. It feels like people are locking their phones in boxes, they're like getting old tech all the time and trying to get hold of all their like DVDs they had at their parents' houses instead of sort of consuming new new media at the sort of rapid rate we've been consuming it. And I think overall, like we're reaching that a bit of a breaking point where people just want to indulge in period dramas and classics, and you know, me seeing everybody reading Wuthering Heights on the tube when Wuthering Heights was coming out, you know. I I too was one of them, one of the Wuthering Heights readers. And it I think you can just see everybody wanting to engage with this media to escape sort of our current very tech-heavy, scary world. Um, and that for me that was a big pull for Bridgeton having you know the beautiful outfits and the very classic way of communicating with people and the structures of society then feels very exciting to sort of step back into that world instead of it being this sort of chaos that we do now, if that sort of makes any sense. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yeah, yeah. I mean I love period drama as well. I think it's such um it's just a gorgeous medium and a wonderful genre. Um uh is that is that like a particular era of history when you look back on what you would have particularly have liked to have like lived in? Um is the Bridgeton era somewhere that you would have liked to have lived in yourself as well?

SPEAKER_02 3:49

I think it's a hard one, isn't it? Because yearning to go back to these times, it's not as beautiful as we see in things like uh Bridgeton, which is why we use the term sort of romantic fantasy instead of I guess like a classic period drama or retelling. Because, you know, as a disabled person, uh things may not have been as easy for me as it maybe comes across on screen in a show like Bridgeton. You know, I I have a really good job working in the Bridgeton house, and that might not have been um a role that was suitable for me as a disabled person, authentically, if I was born into that space and time, and obviously all the problems with be being a woman in that time period as well, and you know, the all of that being imposed on you by society, I guess, at large. But there's also something so lovely about being able to escape into all the best bits, you know, being able to dress in such a luxurious way, and we all like to imagine that we'd be in that top 1%, like the Bridgetons, where they have beautiful, lavish lifestyle and balls, and no one really goes to work, everyone just sort of spends lots of money and sits around and has lots of tea and cake. Um, and I think I think I'd like to align myself with with those values if I could go back for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah, I mean the show is so lavish to watch. I mean, every scene is so beautifully put together, and the set design is in is impeccable. Um, what was it like actually being on set and seeing all of that unfold in front of you in person?

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Oh my gosh, it was amazing. I do a lot of theatre, and I've been spoilt with amazing sets and things across many, many productions that I've done. But there's something about going into the Bridgeton world where they have taken just this meticulous detail in such a broad scale, but also down to the teacups and the the cutlery, and you know, everything is so beautifully done for for moments, you know, where when you're filming, you feel like you're actually there, actually doing it for real. And that's something that I don't think I've ever experienced before. You know, it it really it really is magical, and it and it does so much of the heavy lifting for you as well, as an actor, selfishly, when I'm dressed to perfection, it helps, it really helps out.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah, I can imagine. Um, how much of yourself did you see in Hazel as well? And going into the show.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

Oh, that's a nice question. I really like Hazel, she's a lot of fun. I I kind of align myself with her sort of witchy, slightly doolally, but also joyful and glass half full mentality. But I also think she's a lot wiser than me, uh, and that she is the life of the party in a way that I'm not. Um I think sometimes I I sit sit back in in social scenarios where Hazel might step forward. Um, but I definitely would like Hazel to be the sort of better version or best version of myself, I suppose. Um we're similar in lots of ways, but also she's I think lived quite a uh a harder life than me. I'm not envious of that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah, um I was gonna say as well, you know, Ollie Higginson is you know one of my favourite people. Um I loved having him on the podcast a few weeks back. Um, how quickly were you able to you know build that bond between Hazel and Fitman John, too?

SPEAKER_02 7:24

I mean, Ollie's great, it's very easy to bond with him on a personal level, but also on a character-based level. I mean, I I met him the first time I met him was at the table read, and I was like, Oh, I know you! And he didn't know me. Um, but I recognised him from seeing him in the last five years, which was very prolific on the the theatre scene in in London. He he was wonderful in it. Um, we'd never met, but I felt the need to overshare that I'd seen him um before. But he was super, super lovely, and we got chatting, and we realised we had lots in common, and we went for coffee and sort of got to know each other, and and it sort of from that point forward was just really I I felt really happy when I saw him on the cool sheet. When I saw him, when I saw his little number, I'd be like, oh, it's a nice little day with Ollie. And we sort of frequently walk across the car park together between between scenes and sort of find reasons to go get coffees to to Natter with him. Um, because he's just such he's a lovely guy, but it's so easy to also have fun in cre creating the sort of bond between Hazel and Footman John. Um, because you get with something with a show like Bridgeton, you you only get so much like lines because it's such an ensemble-based show, you know. We can be shooting a scene and it can be sort of four or five lines long. Um, and Ollie and I would often play games about like how much we subtext we can sort of fit in to those those short scenes and um sort of creating a world of um relationship between the two characters, I suppose, in such a small, small, small amount of time. Um, but it was really fun to do, and we we had a really nice time.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like Bridgeton is also um full of like theatre actors as well. You know, there's you know yourself and Ollie Higginson, but there's also like Luke Thompson as well. Um, of course, Jonathan Bailey started off in theatre too. Um, like, do you feel like the theatre world and like a screen mod is like sort of like melding closer together? And how do you feel about that too?

SPEAKER_02 9:37

I like that. I personally am a big hater of the idea that acting isn't acting, and what I mean by that is that it's not the same skill that you can be in a movie or be it in a play. For me, this the skill is a transferable one, and I think constantly we're being told, either through drama school or through sort of classic training or ideologies or whatever, that acting is very different depending on where you do it. So, like you have to be a Shakespearean specialist in order to take on a Shakespeare. And if you can sing, like you're probably too loud and obnoxious to do a straight play, you know, and and we're constantly putting these self-inflicted issues, I suppose, onto ourselves instead of allowing us to sort of get excited by stories and just try your hand at a bunch of different things. So much of what I find being an actor is is being challenged and being frightened. And you know, I was definitely as soon as I got the yes from Bridgeton and I found out I was doing the job, the first thing I felt was fear and panic that I didn't have the tools in order to be able to do the job properly, which I know sounds insane, but we do live with this thing of that that we are imposters and you you don't know what you're doing ever, any of the time, and I just don't think it's true. I think staying curious and being able to take the skill of acting and just applying it to different mediums is the best bit of the job, to be honest. It's really fun. Um, and to be honest, as a someone who started off in theatre, I'd love to keep doing telly and keep doing films and stuff because it it really helps and it adds so much variety and excitement to my life. So ideally, everyone just melds together.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Yeah, definitely. Um, I saw Into the Woods a few weeks ago, and you know, since then it's been nominated for 11 Olivier's, which is amazing. Yeah, um, and the show you know it feels so fresh and at the same time, you know, so faithful to Sondheim's intentions as well. Um, what were those sort of like early conversations like with Jordan Fine on what his vision for the show was?

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Jordan has always been very clear about what he wanted from the show, which I think is really wonderful, actually. I think with a lot of times when you're reviving things, you have to ask yourself why you're reviving something. And the answer can be simply because you love the work and you think it deserves a place to be, you know, on the West End and for people to see it. But oftentimes it's if you're reviving something, it's to trial it on fresh audiences, to reinvent it, to sort of hold a mirror up to current society and show us a reflection of ourselves. And for Jordan, I think it was to really pay homage to the world of Sondheim that he loved growing up and the version that he watched on BHS or whatever. I don't know if he went in real life. And I think something like Into the Woods, like it hasn't been majorly revived in London in in a while, not since it was at it was at Regents Park, which had a wonderful production, and it had the Don Mah production. But I think with something like Into the Woods, it keeps becoming relevant because of how human it is. And I think that was Jordan's main thing, if I can speak for him, is that he wanted to just sort of show UK audiences that it's really cool to be human. Um, and also show it through this modern stylised way, but also with so much love for the original. Um, and you can sort of see that through all the 80s styling. Um, for anyone who's not seen the show, it's kind of like a medieval meets 1980s sort of formation on stage, which for me makes so much sense because that would have been, I guess, the the theatrical language of the films and fairy tales that Sondheim would have been referencing at the time, you know, are fairy tales look quite differently today in 2026. But the 80s version of those shows, I think it was nice to look into and um use those to sort of help create the characters. Anyway, I kind of went on a bit of a tangent, but that I think essentially that's what Jordan wanted to do uh is to create that version of Into the Woods for today.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Absolutely. I mean, I feel like um we grow up with such um distinct ideas of you know what a hero is and what a villain is, but into the woods it sort of blurs that line between good and bad, you know, the moral lines are so um they're not always clear. Um I feel like um Little Red Riding Hood is also so different to Hazel. Um was there something that uh in particular that you want to get across the audiences when you're playing that part too?

SPEAKER_02 14:30

Oh, I'm really enjoying playing Little Red Riding Hood. I'm sort of finding more stuff all the time. That's the nice thing about doing theatre is that you you get to spend so long with a character and you get another go all the time. If you have a bit of a shoddy performance, no worries, because you get to do it tomorrow, or maybe even later on the same day. You get many, many opportunities to give it another go. Um, but for me, I really wanted to show a different spin on Red Riding Hood. Um, she's very traditionally, she's been very skippy, very sort of stupid, maybe, or innocent, or um, she's definitely had been a lot more childlike. For me, I wanted to show Red Riding Hood to be sort of a teenager of some sort, but not like a really young teenager. And I just wanted her to have this sort of Wednesday Adams kind of vibe about her, where she's very matter-of-fact, she doesn't really have any social skills, but she's very, you know, she knows what she wants and she knows what's exciting to her, and she knows what she doesn't care about. I really think with the show, you get such an opportunity to grow all of these characters, and I think when she encounters the amount of grief that she has to deal with in the show, like she deals with a lot of stuff. Um, her sort of encounter with the wolf is very scary for her, but also really like awakening for her, and she has to deal with a lot of a lot of stuff around trust and men, and that people aren't who they say they are, and there's there's a lot for her to unpack. Um, and I was very keen to take her on a journey from being feeling like she knows everything to sort of feeling like she doesn't know actually that much at all, which is weirdly kind of the opposite of what it is on paper, because she sings like I know things now after she feels like she didn't know things before. But actually, the for me becoming an adult has always been figuring out what you don't know, you know, because you're there like what once upon a time you felt like you knew everything, and then it's like, oh, actually, I wish I knew less. I wish I knew less about kind of everything, blissful ignorance and all of that. Um, but that that was for me was something that that I wanted to share. But yeah, she's very different from Hazel, it's a bit different character, it's a bit it's a bit crazy. Um, but I feel very lucky to sort of be able to put my name on on both of those characters at the moment and be part of the long line of Red Riding Hoods that have come before, all of which I love the performances of. And whenever anybody has a production of Into the Woods that they want to show me, I'm so keen to see it because I'm like, I want to know what that Red Riding Hood did. That's so exciting to me. If there was someone else that had played Hazel, I'd probably want to watch that too. I'm like, what did you think? Had what did you what did you want to say? What did I miss?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Absolutely. Um I feel like Into the Woods is such an interesting show because the first half doesn't it's so there's so much comedy there, you know, it feels very light, but then the second half it's so much darker, you know, where the giant arrives, and you know, you start to see you know characters dying essentially, which you don't expect to happen. Um, how do you sort of like maintain that sort of like emotional continuity um through you know two very yeah different sort of story arcs?

SPEAKER_02 18:03

It's hard. It's it's it's a hard one actually, and I think the main one is just trying to stay curious and like knowing that on different days grief will hit you differently. And I think anyone who's lost anyone in their lives, for real in real life, will probably say the same, in that some days grief is not very tangible, and other times it it's more tangible, or um, sometimes emotion hits you very hard, um, and and other times it feels like you're really searching for things, like it um, you know, that there are many, many times when I'm on stage and I feel a bit like a fraud because because sometimes I can feel my eyes welling up with tears almost instantaneously, and then there are other times when I'm like I'm not feeling much, and I have to sort of look for things to you know to help me evoke the right emotions and the right feelings. Um but it is it's it's kind of strange. I like to think of the show in two halves, as you say. The first half for me is quite cartoonish in a way. Like I like the things are quite simplistic and it feels like it's quite broad strokes of ideas and feelings and emotions, and that's a lot of fun to play because it does feel like you're being a cartoon character, and then in part two, it suddenly things are a lot less clear, and that's also reflected kind of in the the woods physically being all broken down and crushed and everywhere, and and that's how I feel as well. If you know my relationships with all the characters are a lot less clear and understood, and you know, the minute feels like Red Riding Hood gets to become friends or make relationships with other characters, they can sort of be taken from her, and her emotions and opinions on people change really rapidly throughout the show. Um, and I guess just staying in the moment and trying to stay present and aware and think all of those thoughts in real time is something that helps guide me through the show. Because the minute you drop the ball, it's like, man, who do I who do I hate? Who do I like? So much is happening, it's very overstimulating.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Absolutely. I mean, I feel like there's a real appetite for Sondyme at the moment, you know, something in the Park of George is coming back next year, and there's you know upcoming productions of Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd as well, um, in Manchester and Birmingham. Um, why do you think his shows are even having such a moment now?

SPEAKER_02 20:34

I mean, sadly, after sometimes passing, I think we're all reminded. I mean, we knew that he was a legend and that he made incredible work, but I think suddenly faced with the idea that someone cannot make any more work, it's like, let's revisit some of the best musical theatre we have. For me, it is it really is some of the best we've got. The way he manages to create clever poetry and also really earnest, reflective, funny, classy things. I mean, his music is like mathematical, and I think it's why a lot of people who don't quote unquote like musicals like sometimes, because it feels quite different from other areas or what you might think of when you think of a classic musical. What you know, maybe you're thinking of like sound music or something like Legally Blonde. Both of those shows I love so much for different reasons. I think they're for me, both of those shows are in my top forever. But sometimes it's in this really interesting, fun, middle place where it sort of is a genre all on its own, and I think that's really exciting when I hear new things within the show on a night to night, and which is insane. Like, I've done. Over a hundred shows of Into the Woods at this point, and that's not including all the time I've spent reading the play and doing rehearsals and practicing the songs. And I'm still hearing new bits that I've not heard before, and new nuances and things, and it's like, man, the depth of this stuff, like it just keeps proving itself relevant, which I think is also why it's having such a revival at the moment of us seeing so many sondines, is because it keeps being useful to us. There's still more to unpack, there's still more to discover, and as our world changes, it means we can look back on these amazing musicals and go, well, I guess there's a universality there, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Um, I feel like a another writer that seems to be everywhere at the moment is Arthur Miller, you know, with All My Sons and Broken Glass. Um, I wanted to talk to you about the crucible because again it was so powerful, and you know, I feel you know really feature at its best. Um, I remember walking into the Olivier and seeing that rain curtain and feeling like something really special was about to happen. Um, what were sort of like your initial thoughts on the show and how did you begin to tap into Susanna Walcott as well?

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Oh gosh, I had such a good time on that show. I felt so lucky to do it because at this point I just left school and I had one job on my CB, uh, and it was uh Panto, the lyric Ham Smith, which I was thrilled with um because I love Panto, I'm a huge fan. When I got the audition through and I got to sit down um with Lindsay Turner, the director, I felt really, really blessed that she sort of saw me and saw my CV and was like, yeah, great. I think you totally could be the girl for this job, which is just amazing because I I am a big Arthur Miller nerd. I read so much going into that show, you know, on the Salem Witch trials and McCarthyism and everything, and it was it was just the best. Getting to be Susanna Walcott was just also just such great fun, and and getting to cover Abigail as well, which was so great. I I ended up doing loads of performances actually for that because the role is so taxing, it's just so it's so hard. It doesn't surprise me that everyone needed needed a little help with it. So I was very happy to sort of be be in the wings, happy to to do a show every now and again.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Was it tricky learning two different parts as well?

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Yeah, it was really hard. I'd not I'd not done any understudying before, and I had enough, you know, on my plate with Susanna, like I was doing the show on a night tonight anyway, so I didn't kind of have any expectation that I'd ever go on. Uh because we had Erin Doherty from The Crown and and Adolescence and everything else amazing that she's done, playing Abigail, and then also Millie Olcock, who did it in the West End. So I understudied both those women who were doing the track, and they were honestly both just so fabulous, they were so good, like I'm so lucky, um, but it was it was kind of hard to you know not do the job full time and also give the understudying enough weight and practice and being able to just like do a job like that on a just like one time, you know, without like loads of training and stuff. It it was it was hard sometimes. I felt a bit like a fraud. Um, but after a few times I kind of got the the hang of it and gosh, I'd love to play it again at some point because it is just I mean Arthur Miller is another one who just keeps proving himself relevant in society at the moment. Like I will never be bored of seeing Arthur Miller plays revived. I think they're so good.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

I think it was such a stunning production. Um, I feel like most people who go to the theatre regularly know the crucible and know the story. Um, but I still went and still just thought it was absolutely profound, and you know, I still found new things in that production, which you know surprised me and shocked me as well. Um, yeah, again, like what were some of those conversations like with Lindsay Turner on how TD present this piece to a modern-day audience and to audiences who are familiar and not familiar with the show, too?

SPEAKER_02 26:31

I mean, I think Lindsay Turner is a real visionary, I think she's really, really clever, um, and the way that she made things useful for me and my lived experience, and also actors who are 60 years older than me in the company. You know, the way that she manages to explain things and share analogies and bits of information with us that can help spur on our performances and help create the right tone and flavour for the thing that she was trying to make. The fact that she could encourage us all really equally, I just thought that was that was incredibly amazing. Because working in a company like The Crucible, where our youngest actor was nine and our eldest actor was late 70s, 80s, you know, that's a full village worth of people. Like to fight the fact that I could call all of those people my colleagues, I still find so exciting. Um, and the way that she managed to sort of man the ship, I just thought was so incredible. She works in this way that I find is really personal. I think sometimes when we're working with plays, we try to intellectualize these things too much, um, especially when we have all of these context clues about something like the crucible, we have McCarthyism and the reason why the play was made in the first place, you know. It was written as an analogy of or a social comment. The it was written as a social comment of the political climate that it was written in. Arthur Miller was using The Witch Trials to talk about the political climate, and I think it's very easy for us to maybe talk about the political climate we are today and the political climate that was there, and the political climate that was, and actually, that's not what Lindsay wanted to talk about. She just wanted to share the story, and if anything new came out of it, then that was really exciting. But we weren't gonna spend hours and hours unpicking politics, but we were gonna spend a long, long time unpicking personal relationships and the things that are really um like accessible for us all to get, you know. Um, and I don't know if that makes any sense. I've got no idea if that makes any sense, but that's that's how I I I think she works in a really wonderful way that's really inclusive and made me feel really at home as a 19-year-old who definitely walking into the National Theatre didn't know if I would even feel like I had a seat at the table, and she made me feel really included, which is just the best, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Yeah, and you've got to work together again fairly recently on the little foxes as well, which was again a really yeah, a really powerful retelling of like a really important story, I think, about you know personal relationships and how that clashes with business and capitalism as well, in this very American story, I feel. What was it like in the approaching text and you know, were you familiar with like Living Hellman as well going into it?

SPEAKER_02 29:47

So that one's a bit of a funny story. So I only did I did one week on The Little Foxes because unfortunately, due to caste illness, one of the uh actors, Eleanor Worthington Cox, wonderful actress, um, was sadly ill. And then I got a phone call from Lindsay and Nadia Fall from The Young Vic. It's her first week as new artistic director at The Young Vic, and she was like, Hello, help me, essentially. Um, have you do you know anything about the play? And I was like, no. Um have you got tickets? I was like, Yeah, I've got tickets. Um I'm going next week, and and they're like, Great, like, uh, do you think you could read it? And I was like, What do you mean? Um, they essentially asked me to learn the role and read it off of my iPad and did the show like that, and it was terrifying, it's one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, um, but also one of the most challenging and amazing experiences of my life. So I, you know, I got this phone call at about 11 o'clock pm the night before.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

What made you say yes?

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Because I love Lindsay Turner, not to embarrass her, but I do think she's wonderful. Um, and she I wanted to work with her again, and I wanted to do the play. It'd been a while since I had done a play, and I was doing Bridgeton at the time. I was like, I'd done about four months of Bridgeton, and I felt like I hadn't seen a single soul that wasn't working in the Bridgeton production team, and suddenly I got this call from the West End, from the London's West End, and they were like, Hey, can you help us out? And I was like, Yeah, take take me take me home, essentially. And as soon as I'd said yes and put the phone down, I was suddenly struck with this impending doom that I had to read the play, learn the play, and do the play the next day. Um but the cast was so wonderful, and Anne Marie Duff, like she was just so wonderful, and she really like took me under her wing, and I didn't bring deodorant, and I was really nervous and I was really sweaty, and she gave me a deodorant. Um, I still have Anne Marie Duff's deodorant in my house. And genuinely, it's just things like that that are just like really, really wonderful and really you know show the humanity of of people, um, because they it allowed me to do it, and I went on and I said all the lines and I stood in all the right places and I did some it. It won't be it will no by no means be anyone's even slightly near best performance. It's probably the worst performance anybody's ever seen. However, it was very amazing to do, and I hope that the people who saw the show that night, instead of being wholeheartedly disappointed, were like 80% disappointed and like 20% really excited that they got to sort of go on that journey with me.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

I mean it's a fantastic character as well. I mean, that ending at the end of the play, those few lines, you know, when she's confronting the mother. Oh my god, it's terrifying as well.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Genuinely, as I was reading it, I was like, God, she's really going for her right now. And then I remembered that it was me. So I mean, you're you're reading these things, and I'm like, God, she's getting angry. And then I'm like, I have to get angry, I'm acting it. I'm getting angry, you know, because you don't have enough time to kind of come up with these decisions, so it was definitely broad strokes of acting. Um, but it was really amazing, and I think that play is wonderful. Lindsay wrote me a wonderful um email, essentially, uh, inviting me uh to a very, very short stay in the uh uh the Giddens household where the little foxes are set, and she was she was just she was just super super wonderful about it.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Amazing. I mean it's uh cool that you've played such an interesting variation of roles in such a short span of time, you know, Susanna Walkart and then yeah, Little Foxes, and um now in Into the Woods. Um do you still have any dream roles that you still want to do as well?

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Oh my gosh, I have many, and I think I want to play, I want to keep acting. Essentially, my goal is to just keep acting as long as I can, and there are many, many roles that I would like to play, none I would like to jinx, but I definitely think I need to have a little session vision boarding again, um, because many of the things that I really wanted to do setting out in this job, I've been lucky enough to do. Bridgeton was always something I wanted to do on TV, and it's happened and do a play at the National Theatre, like that was so on my bucket list, like that was something that I never thought could happen, and and it did, and you know, be a a lead on the West End, you know, these these these things really go on a baby actor's dream list, and I feel very lucky to have accomplished a lot of those things already. Um, but I think for me the ultimate dream is to just keep doing it and keep finding exciting characters and keep putting my spin on things, and for me as well, keep engaging in new work. I think my dream job is probably one that hasn't been invented yet and that hasn't been written yet, and I think that's always very exciting as well because there's everything that's come before us that I don't know anything about that I can't wait to learn about, but then there's also people who are writing right now, who hopefully can write something fun and maybe maybe please asking me to do it.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

I mean it's amazing when you look at some of those like veteran actors, you know, are still acting in the you know 70s and 80s. Um is that sort of like what you see for yourself as well, you know, in the future, too.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

I really love that. I think to keep doing it and be really old and be in the theatre, I think that would be just so fun. The amount of times I've been out with colleagues in their 70s, and you'll be at the bar, and there'll be like three people there having a point, someone will be in their 70s, someone will be in their 20s, and someone will be in their 50s, and you get a strange look, and then they'll ask if you're related, and you're like, and you have to explain your colleagues, and then it's the best feeling because people don't get that, you don't get in other careers in the same way that community within the work space, which is so respectful, and you know, there's so much I can learn from from those people, and I can only hope to to be like them when I'm older.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Absolutely. Um, it's been so so lovely talking to you. Um, just as a last question, then what is the best part about being Gracie McGonagall?

SPEAKER_02 36:55

I don't know. I have a wonderful support network of friends and family who support me um and have always believed in me because it's meant that having to do something crazy like try and be an actor hasn't been as difficult as it might be if I had people who didn't believe in me, essentially, because it it means that I don't have to believe in myself because other people because other people do it for me, and I feel very lucky.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

That's so lovely. Uh Grayson McGonigal, it's been so lovely talking to you.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Nice to talk to you too, it's been great.