Video taken outside the venue where the open call auditions took place showed Grace, Olivia, and Dave waiting in line and looking at show host Nick Cannon talking to some of the other contestants. And a backstage video of Grace just before she went on stage taken by Grace’s dad, Dave Vanderwall, and posted to his Twitter Account.
At the open-call auditions in 2017 the showrunner Jason Raff commented: "What we're looking for is something that literally gives you goosebumps when you're in the room. … I remember when Grace Vanderwaal entered our room, and I was like, 'Oh another kid singer, we see so many of them.' And then she started singing and I got goosebumps. And I knew from that day on her life was about to change."
In an Interview with Scott Lipps in august 2022, Grace talked about the open-call audition, as she had several times before, but with a few new details: “None of us would ever in a million year have though what that [going to the audition] would become. We literally did that for shits and giggles. I don’t think my mom would even have put me in if she had known what would happen. I did that audition, which was bizarre. There was no line – which is the only reason we went there because we found out there were only long lines in filming cities. They grouped us together: singers, dancers, magicians. And then they took about 20 people into this like classroom, and you have like 20 seconds, and there is this woman with a laptop typing away, not looking up. And I was like – OK, what the hell is happening because I did my turn, I think I sang Ex’s and Oh’s or something, Then we all went out of the room into this tiny hallway, and it was dark and hot. And then they asked me back in, with some weird excuse like, we are missing something on your information or something. So, I went in, and she asked me to sing another song. And she literally had me sing until I knew no more covers to sing. And then that was the first time I sang IDKNM because I ran out of songs. I sang that, and then they took me to a whole other building. And my mom and I went: what the fuck, is this just happening, is this going to be a thing? “
She also talked about the audition and how it felt to win: “The last time I watched it was two years ago. It had been so long since I had seen it, and it was genuinely like such a surreal moment rewatching it. I am not going to lie – this is every interviewer's dream because they are always trying to prompt me to say this – do you remember how you felt at that moment? NO, I DON’T! I blacked out; I was 12. I watched it, and I definitely felt like a little bit of wave through me of that specific feeling: a feeling I never felt again in my entire life – I don’t even know how to describe it."