We were lucky to catch up with Carmen DeLeon recently and have shared our conversation below.

Carmen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I think I was in elementary school when I learned that I love performing on stage. I used to try out for the school plays and musicals and talent shows. I never landed a lead role, until my junior year of high school where I was cast as part of the main cast for a musical. But even so, I loved performing, especially if it was a focus on comedy. I remember in fourth grade, I auditioned for a school play and was really hoping for the lead female role; I didn’t get the part, and instead got cast as the comedic interlude character. I was pretty heart broken back then. But to this day, I still can recite my monologue like the back of my hand! I was a weather woman who wasn’t the brightest, haha. My name was Wanda Fulweather (pun very much intended!) I remember, even though my part in the play was so small, I had made everyone in the audience laugh! That feeling was indescribable and I think from that moment on I knew that I wanted to pursue comedy for film and TV. Comedy stems from real life, real painful, real challenging situations, and I’ve always thought it was a superpower to take these scary, nerve-racking, stressful, sad, frustrating, and just all around negative emotions, and also just full blown life experiences, and laugh at them. I heard a saying, “if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” It’s easy to be hateful and negative when things get tough, but if you learn to let go and laugh at the hard times, life becomes a little bit easier and a whole lot more fun.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

What’s up! I’m Carmen! I’m a Southern Arizona native turned Angelino of over 10 years.

I’m an actress and cook who lives happily between the worlds of food and entertainment.

I run a food pop up and dinner party experience called Capicu that celebrates Puerto Rican cuisine, which is where my family is from.

Capicu originally started as a dinner party series under the name Noche Borinqueña, where I got to cohost a collaborative dinner party with local artist friends at their art studio and would curate a coursed dining experience complete with drink pairings, and the featured artist would make custom art for each guest in attendance. This idea of bringing art and food together originally stemmed from when I first started putting together an acting reel for myself when I didn’t have any content to show for. I ended up creating my own YouTube series called “The Not Starving Artist” where I teach viewers how to “get creative in the kitchen on a budget” because we are in fact living that “starving artist” life haha, but why limit your creativity to just your craft when cooking is a form of art too? And so the dovetail of food and entertainment started there.

As I continued with the supper clubs, I wanted to make all the Puerto Rican dishes I made more accessible to the masses so I decided to TAKE IT TO THE STREETS! Haha! And Capicu the pop up was born! I’ve been extremely lucky to have popped up at GotYourBack in Long Beach as well as LA Homefarm in Glassell Park. Last year, I’ve also ventured into the world of catering, having catered a 150 person wedding in the Coachella Valley!

When I’m not cooking, you can find me self taping, hustling for those auditions, or, catch me in a Wayfair commercial or two! Slowly working to make my dreams come true. We out here trying to be the next Jessica Day in New Girl!

This new year, along with moving forward in my acting career, I’m wanting to continue to grow Capicu and pop up at other fun locations as well as host other collab dinner parties featuring local artists, small business vendors, and musicians. I love the idea of throwing a big ol’ party with your friends to help bring each other up, sharing and celebrating each others’ creative strengths, which in turn, nourishes your own creative soul.

So if you’re an artist who wants to collab, or someone who has never tried Puerto Rican food before and is curious, or you have a space that is looking for a lil cook to pop up at, or if you’re a Casting Director who is in search of a curly haired Latina, hit up ya girl!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

There have definitely been many moments throughout my journey this far that have really pushed my boundaries and tested my capacity. From making the move to a big city like LA from a small town in Southern Arizona with no plan B, to maintaining life here despite lack of finances- no hill that I’ve climbed to make it this far was easy by any means. But 1000 percent, I don’t regret any of it no matter how challenging or uncertain some moments were. Every challenge has helped me develop a tougher skin, has given me confidence in finding a solution, and has been huge in how I adapt and improvise.

Most recently, an example I can think of was the wedding I catered last May.

I was asked to cater a wedding with my very new pop up, Capicu, and I’ve never taken on such a job of that scale ever!

But of course I said yes! Haha! Lessss gooo!

It took 9 months of planning, researching, recipe and menu developing, finding rental equipment, building a team, sourcing product, scouting a kitchen to work at, the list goes on. All of this, by the way, while working a full time job, AND I also shot a commercial out of town one weekend!

It was a hell of a lot of work! But man, when I saw all 150 wedding guests eating food that I grew up eating- my parents recipes, to work along side the most boss chef girl gang, to witness the fruit of your labor… let me tell you, it was all worth it.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to grow my pop up so that way I can have that be my full time work, so that way I can allow more time to focus on my acting goals. If I can create my own schedule of pop ups and supper clubs, I will have more time to tap in to my audition time and even get back to class. I also want to continue to share the worlds of food and entertainment. The hospitality industry has introduced me to so many incredible and talent artists of all mediums and as an artist myself, what better way to connect and grow in the industry than over some delicious food!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://carmendeleon.com/
• Instagram: @cmdeleon23 @tnsaofficial
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@carmendeleontnsa

Image Credits

Kayleigh Eilenberger, Anabel DeLeon, Meg Miller, Maha Aekalu