Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Taylor Castro. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Taylor, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I was already a singer/songwriter and actress when an adaptation of James Alan Ross’s “The Haunting of Dylan Klaypool: Whispers in Black Willow” was pitched to me. It was December 2019, in the diner where they shot Pulp Fiction, and I was being asked to play the protagonist. It was this fantastic thing, an obvious of course, but the TV show was entirely different than what it is today. Written by these two great guys, screenwriters named Brian and Rich, they turned it into this whole new, wild world and called it by another name.

At the time, I was living in Atlanta while attending SCAD for film/television and screenwriting. Because I had some valued knowledge about screenwriting, and because my age/gender would provide a different perspective, I was asked to give a little insight. This, of course, I was elated to do. Brian and Rich were phenomenal, taking in the feedback and bouncing back with even better ideas. We got to the point of location scouting before the project fizzled from sheer improbability to independently produce it at the time. It was just such a large scale thing. The producer, (yes) my mom, put a pin in that version of it.

A year later, perhaps, she gave it another go, This time she wanted a movie so that making the thing independently was possible. She felt, should this alternate adaptation be closer to the original novel, we could make both projects without audience’s even seeing a correlation. That’s how different they were. To keep things simple, she went straight to James: the original creator of Dylan Klaypool and of Black Willow. And James, being awesome as he is, returned with exactly what she’d asked for.

This is where the risk comes in.

I was asked to give insight again, but obsession seized more than it had before. I became crazy about the bond between Dylan and Mitch. Mitch was almost another character at the time: a jock, quite popular, really rather sweet. But I saw something exhilarating in their dynamic and, as a reader, I found myself far less interested in anything else. With permission from James, I was granted access into the drawing room of his world. And, my goodness, I went wild. At the core, birthed by a feeling, a believed in this: we needed to change the genre and the we needed to change the target audience.

Then, months later, I returned to my mother with a 200 page movie script titled “Paranormal Nobodies” and a sheepish disposition because Brian and Rich were right: this story begged to be a show. Her response was, as expected, that she absolutely would never in a million years and what was the whole point of back tracking and just shorten it and are you crazy. Now, fights aside, I asked her to give me a few months to prove it. She agreed. So, over the course of 6 months, I wrote a 106-page TV Bible and went viral on the internet.

We filmed the pilot in February 2023.

Even still, it is all a risk: to create something independent that is ultimately dependent on a buyer, and hoping the path will reveal itself when ready. But producing an independent pilot it is not the biggest risk we could have made. The biggest risk, as it usually is, would have been taking the easier route.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I (Taylor Castro) have basically always been an actress, mostly working on a lot of TV movies since 12-years-old, but around 15 I started marketing myself as a singer/songwriter with an independent label called PMA Records. I released my second album in 2021 and then decided to take a break from music. What I loved most being an artist is the songwriting part. I loved the storytelling. I loved the world building, but something about being a solo artist in my personal experience felt cold. I felt friendless and alienated: the entire antithesis of how stories are supposed to make one feel. And, since screenwriting bridged the gap between my desire to write stories and to keep working in film/television, I started studying it at SCAD Atlanta.

Since making that decision, I’ve been able to grow a much more personal and dedicated, warm following as a writer and also as an actress. My main thing at the moment is “Paranormal Nobodies:” a paranormal teen dramedy adapted from “The Haunting of Dylan Klaypool” by James Alan Ross. It’s about a quiet girl who, after her father is accused of the ghost attacks that traumatized her, has to team up with the paranormal-obsessed freak in her new town to prove ghosts exist. I both wrote it and play the protagonist. We filmed the pilot in Boston and Salem Winter 2023 and are currently in the process of pitching it.

What I love about storytelling in this way is that, although it’s ultimately a personal thing, it’s not only about me. In massive spells of loneliness, fictional character are the ones to stay. They’re the ones who inspire hope that there’s someone in the world who understands. That there is a group of friends out there who will enjoy those eccentricities other people put down. I’ve been beyond awestruck by the beauty in it all because it just so turned out that the characters I wrote while alone became my best friends. Literally. I met most of my best friends because they were cast in the show.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is a wild place, thick with contradiction. It’s dangerous, addictive, unsettling, and it’s also our greatest key to a modern renaissance. Anyone from all walks of life and in every field has, for the first time ever, the opportunity to reach their people regardless of where they’re located, who they know, and how much they have. For a long time, social media repulsed me. It definitely still does sometimes. I loathe the concept of self promotion. I really don’t like performances of authenticity. I despise even more so the tendency social media communities have to make light of basically anything, with everyone saying the same joke over and over again until all traces of originality appear lost to the cosmos of yesteryear’s space and time. But that being said, social media has changed my real world for the better and I think that has a lot to do with how a person perceives it how they decide to use it.

First and foremost, anything is an art if one approaches it as an art. And social media can most definitely be an art. Anyone who sees it as otherwise is probably a little too stuck in what it is to consider what it could be. Consider the birth of most new mediums in the past: novels, animation, television, and more were all once seen as a waste of time or frivolous compared to the already established mediums of the era. I think buying into this belief that social media is stupid is just as bad of a bandwagon belief as the online bandwagon beliefs the people against social media are complaining about. So step one of my advice for anyone trying to grow on social media is to think for yourself.

My second piece of advice is to remember that no one knows who you are, but they’re spending a moment of their lives to find out who you are. It would be rude to disrespect them by creating something self centered; it’s like talking to someone who monopolizes the conversation. In real life, we ask others how they are and we build on the dialogue by relating to them through stories of our own experience. We talk about shared interests or we debate opinions, we offer advice and we receive it. While creating content, keep in mind that you’re trying to start a conversation with someone you’ve never met who could be talking to anyone else anywhere else in the world. Really truly put yourself in their shoes and then ask if you’d care. If so, then post away.

Finally, and I’ve traditionally been pretty bad at this, be consistent. It does prove you’re accountable and keeps you looking fresh, but there’s more to it than that. Every time someone posts, they have the chance to experiment with their ideas and adapt based on what works. A really great conversationalist would do this exact same thing: take the other person’s feelings into account and adjust, in a still authentic way, their approach to things. They listen and they genuinely care. If a person posts consistently, they’re able to adapt at a quicker pace and give the conversation real momentum.

I found most of my audience on TikTok. It took a while to discover what worked for me, but what I found was that my best performing videos usually felt the most authentic and were the easiest to make. Promoting “Paranormal Nobodies” took a little more editing effort, but those two key points remained the same. About two weeks ago, I began putting real work into growing the show’s audience on Instagram (@paranormalnobodiestv). Since posting every day on there, the follower count has gone from around 300 to 5,000 followers. Which is insane and quick and incredible and all together exciting! I’ve seen people get signed to CAA and Warner because of social media, I’ve become friends with people I used to be a fan of because of social media, I’ve heard stories of six figure book deals because of social media. I really do believe it’s the best shot we have at a modern renaissance, open to everyone who puts in the right effort.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think it’s reverse. Literature, film, art, music- it’s all meant to support society. If we’re just speaking culturally, of course. Humans are storytelling creatures at the core. We thrive on community, we make sense of things through folklore. We crave momentary escape from the perceived mundane aspects of our reality. And, more than anything, we want to be understood. Artists will always be needed because art will always be sought. And while something like AI can threaten the integrity of that, it’s still my hope that a worthwhile audience can sense the difference. It’s still my hope that art is brought about by something of the divine and that anything artificial can’t properly embody that.

From there, popular art is the people’s choice. They respond to what they respond to whether someone else likes it or not. It’s just like love. One thing I would like to see, however, is some better high school art education in general. From there, we might as a society start to put artist’s into proper perspective based on actual ability and intellect. There are a lot of brilliant creatives who I’d love to see receive more recognition: specifically Gregory Alan Isakov. But it goes back to my second point while speaking about social media: no one knows who you are. And that’s not their fault. Art should be a selfless offering, free of expectation from the audience. We create because it’s fun or because we need to or because we can’t get the thing out of our heads, but we publish it for the people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.taylorcastro.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taylordaniellecastro/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TaylorCastro
• Other: TikTok:
  https://www.tiktok.com/@taylor_castro?lang=en

Image Credits

Katie Rose Cullen, photographer
Bryan Marchulaitis, photographer