We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Gloria De Leon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Gloria, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I grew up watching Spanish-language telenovelas, and I learned a lot about effective storytelling just by watching the character arcs and plot twists. and by analyzing when creative choices worked and when they didn’t. Of course, as a kid, I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. I was just watching tv and then playing “telenovela” with my cousin and my sister. I’ve always been a bossy kid so, of course, I was always the director and writer of our playroom dramas. I adjusted the storyline as we went depending on what I thought would work.

Mexican TV also had some incredible sketch comedy shows in the late eighties and early nineties. The most well known of these is Chespirito, created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños. I loved watching him transform himself from superhero-grasshopper, to elderly doctor, to shakespearean romancer speaking in iambic pentameter, to orphaned child who lives in a barrel, all while bringing heart and comedy to each story. I learned a lot about comedy and sketch writing from watching shows like Eugenio Derbez’ shows, Derbez en Cuando, and Al Derecho y Al Derbez, as well as my favorite sketch comedy show ¡Anabel! from the brilliant mind of comedian Anabel Ferreira.

This exposure to the most extreme ends of both comedy and drama, fueled my love of performance. I always knew I wanted to pursue a career in entertainment, so despite my parents’ concerns about me never having a “real” job, I formalized my education with a degree in acting from UCLA and an improv education from UCB.

I’m not really sure I would have done anything to speed up the process because I went as fast as was possible for me. Being able to pursue a career in the arts is a privilege, and sometimes my financial priorities were to take care of more immediate needs, so I took classes when I could afford them and I auditioned for work when I could afford to pay for casting website subscriptions. I guess the only thing I wish I would have done sooner is bartending. Working in food service was what eventually gave me the financial stability and schedule flexibility I needed to continue developing as an artist. But I took three years off of doing anything creative, while I was just focused on securing my financial stability.

As far as skills go, I think for any actor observation is key. You have to be naturally curious about everything, and learn how to simply observe. Yes, I love the spotlight when I’m onstage, but I have to earn it. A lot of work has to happen before an actor can take on a role and portray a character authentically. You have to observe the world, observe people, interactions, emotions, all the details you need to create a world that invites an audience in.

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.

NOVELEANDO Podcast. It’s a telenovela podcast for telenovela nerds.

It began as a short comedy podcast where my co-host and I just talked about the novelas we loved watching as kids, but it’s now developed into a comedy storytelling show where we present the plot of each telenovela while clowining on the ridiculousness of it all. Also, telenovelas are problematic AF, so we also use the stories as a bouncing off point to talk about real issues like mental health, colorism, unhealthy relationships, sizeism, ableism, and anything else that comes up. We now discuss both older as well as newer novelas, and we’ve expanded to include novelas dubbed from other languages. The podcast itself, is in English, but telenovela shenanigans are unrestrained by language boundaries.

When not watching and talking about novelas, I’m an actor and a writer.

Since I was little I knew I wanted to be an actor because of my whole telenovela obsession thing. I was constantly practicing slaps and gasps, and imagining myself passionately kissing someone under a strategically placed waterfall. I honestly never considered any other career. My first job in a theater was cleaning the toilets and refilling the soap dispenser. It wasn’t exactly ideal, but I was thirteen, it was the only job available, and I wanted to just BE inside a theater so badly, that I took the position. Through that position I was able to start helping out in the shows, which eventually led to stage time as a background actor, and ten years later, I was invited to be one of the founding members of a theater company that performs in that same theater.
Some of my al time favorite roles have been from productions in that space.

I’ve been writing stories since I was a kid, and when I saw an opportunity to write sketch comedy for a fat-positive team, I was in! I started working with FATCH, the fat sketch comedy show, when the group formed in 2018, and it’s been one of the best experiences of my life. I’ve always felt passionately about creating safe spaces for underrepresented voices, and as a fat person myself, I wanted to be able to tell stories from the fat lens, where fat is neither the butt of the joke, nor something to be ashamed of. Unfortunately, the pandemic took a toll on our group, but I truly hope we can someday get the band back together, because this team was fire!

Currently, I’m working on a few personal screenwriting projects.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think it would be pretty cool to encourage the cultivation of artistic expression in more schools, after school programs, and community centers, The latter could promote creative curiosity that would be accessible to all age levels and without economic barriers. Art is expensive and dedication to art is difficult to manage on a budget, but if we had ways to create and explore art as a community then maybe it would be more accessible to everyone who wanted to give it a try. I think as a culture we tend to think of creatives as either A-List celebrities, or struggling artists, but there’s so much in between! Communal artistic projects could help build stronger community bonds, allow anyone looking to learn about art to do so, and it would provide job opportunities for artists.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I’ve known acting was my passion since I was seven years old, when the theater troupe I started was disbanded, and it only made me stronger!

It was just a bunch of kids from my first grade class and we didn’t have a company name or anything, but somehow I got them all to rehearse all the scenes from a kids book I checked out from the library. Then, I got the kindergarten teachers to agree to let us come into their classrooms and perform the book. Next, I got my teacher to agree to let us all out of class to do our now touring show of this kids book. It wen’t amazing! We had a great run!

But I was hungry for more. We were going to do it again, but this time, I was going to write the story myself. I had been watching a lot of telenovelas and I needed the story to be more raw, we needed more conflict. So I wrote a moving piece about gang violence and a the pressures of teenage life. We were barely in rehearsals during recess when one of the staff members saw us acting and dressing like gang members and I guess we were all just really good actors, cause she would NOT accept my explanation that we were rehearsing for a play ABOUT gang life, but we were actually all very nice first-graders who liked playing pretend.

I was not allowed to rehearse anything further. The other kids were completely unphased; they just wanted to play. But I was fired up. I continued to write stories, and throughout the years I tried everything I could to get in front of a group or perform on a a stage. And that’s pretty much what I’m still doing: writing stuff that moves me, and looking for stages to stand on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.gloriatheactress.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noveleandopodcast?igshid=NmNmNjAwNzg%3D
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NoveleandoPodcast
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloriatheactress/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAdXccVBfBmHDtj3pAjWrLw
• Other: https://linktr.ee/gloriatheactress

Image Credits
John Nichols, Kyle Boston – Trick Boston Media