Yes that's cool. That's brave too to reveale your life like that. He always asked the ones who know a bit what he does for a living to not tell the others. He prefered to keep it secret. But to help, to show that it's possible to make things better when lots of families think the opposite he chose to reveale who he is on tv.
The casting : apparently there were about 100 "grands frères" ... but the producers found him and asked him, he wasn't at the casting first in fact.