We were lucky to catch up with Sofia Carregha Lozano recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sofia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

Funny enough, I graduated my musical theater conservatory in May 2020. My graduating performance was a self tape made in my living room in Mexico. My younger sister held the light, my older sister played the track, my mom held the camera, and my grandma beside my dad were the audience. After this, I started doing mainly Zoom unpaid projects, such as table reads, zoom plays, etc. Until I was finally able to fly back to nyc. As soon as I got here I started applying to every project I could see in every breakdown service. I finally got a callback for a commercial for Sansone Auto Company. They were asking for an actor with soccer skills so, funny enough, it had nothing to do with my résumé, but a lot to do with my personal experience coming from a 15-year-long dedication to playing soccer. It was in New Jersey so I had to take an Uber. They sat me with Hair and Make up and started telling me what I’d be doing. This was a car commercial where they were aiming to do a recreation of Shakira’s Waka Waka music video. So I had a different car brands on each side of my face and I had to juggle the ball in front of a green screen, had to do playback to a song, do some improvised dancing with the ball, all while dressed in a pink soccer jersey. It was just so on-brand for me, and such a fun environment too. It lasted less than an hour and I walked out with around $100 usd. The first thing I did after I got back to the city was buy a checkerburger w cheese in a meal, from Chekers (my then favorite fast food restaurant) and celebrated my first paid gig as a performer.

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

I consider myself to be a performer because my first passion was always singing, then I discovered a love for acting and I am currently enrolled in a dance conservatory, even though I originally came here to study Musical Theatre. I am working towards becoming a triple threat, and what got me here was the first time I set a foot on a stage at 14, performing as Flounder in a production of the Little Mermaid. The thing that sets me apart from others I believe is my hard-working skills motivated by my inspiration and passion for what I do. I’m also a geek when it comes to script analysis and or analyzing the accompaniment of a musical piece and I love incorporating all of that into the performance. I strive to tell the stories of those who look and act like me so that little girls that look like me can look up to me and say “if she could I can too”. I also see performing as a child’s play, the more you work on a piece (it being a choreography, a scene, a song, etc.) the more fun you get playing with it. I would also say that the thing that makes me the most proud is the people that I’ve known along the way, because these are the people that inspire me every day seeing their journey, their passion.

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

As an immigrant I was only allowed to apply for gigs and work for a period of 12 months after my Musical theatre Conservatory. Unfortunately as I mentioned before, I graduated in May 2020 from my living room in Mexico. Also, with those 12monts of employment authorization, you’re not supposed to gather 30 or 60 days of unemployment or you risk loosing the permit. So instead of focusing on all the things that were against me at that moment, I decided to find a way to get what I wanted. So from my house in Mexico I decided to film several monologues, songs and small dance combos to create reels. I edited them and uploaded them to my profiles in Backstage, Actors Access, etc. and applied to at least 30 projects everyday (in NY and LA), even if I didn’t feel right for the part. Always let them say no to you, don’t just take it for granted. I eventually got a couple of virtual projects (one in TX, another one in NY, etc) which helped a lot. I had already worked on 4 different projects by the time I moved back to nyc in the Fall of 2020. All because I didn’t let my geographical location, immigration status, self image perception, or a pandemic stop me from putting myself out there.

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

This is actually a funny story. After I graduated high school I made a promise to myself that I would let myself be me without caring what people thought (100x easier said that done). But something that I’ve always enjoyed is to record stories on how my day’s been, good or bad. At first it was mainly family members and friends that would comment on them telling me never to stop or that I had made their day. I realized that it didn’t take a lot of effort since I enjoyed doing it and apparently people found them funny. Fast forward to tik tok times and I start doing random tik toks, I didn’t care about the followers or having a brand or a theme. I just did whatever trends I liked; used the sounds I found funny… but it wasn’t until I started telling stories about my personal life on tik tok that I started going viral. Then on instagram I decided to use a sound that I thought described perfectly how anxiety feels to me and it went viral. I will say that I have different content in each platform starting with the fact that my ig is mostly in English and my tik tok is mostly in Spanish, but they both have me just being myself in them, talking about my life, the same way I used to do it when I had less tgan 20 followers. Cause even if it was only one video that went viral, people stayed for a reason. It’s been a year at least after both my videos went viral and I still get the occasional 185k views in a tik tok or 3k views on my insta stories. If someone asked me for advice I would just say to be yourself and be as authentic as possible, there’s an audience for everything. And if you don’t feel like posting everyday, don’t. You don’t HAVE TO do anything, it’s YOUR platform, YOU choose what to do with it. People who like it will stay, people who don’t won’t, and that’s okay.

Contact Info:

• Website: SofiaCarreghaLozano.com
• Instagram: SofiaCarreghaLozano
• Twitter: SofiaCarreghaL
• Youtube: SofiaCarreghaLozano
• Other: Tik tok: MiAmigaDelChisme