Diego Tinoco: Carry Lessons, Not Weight, Release the Past and Reinvent Yourself

Actor Diego Tinoco opens up about the insecurities, emotional weight, and silent pressure behind success. From hiding his vitiligo under long sleeves, to moving to Los Angeles with nothing but belief, Diego breaks down imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and the illusion of fame.

We explore why anxiety comes from trying to control tomorrow, how presence shapes identity, and why the past becomes baggage when we refuse to let go. This conversation is a reminder that growth requires discomfort, vulnerability builds connection, and only you must see the vision before anyone else does.

If you’ve ever felt unseen, behind, or afraid to jump, watch until the end. There’s a message here you might need today.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, we're going back to my trauma days.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Not everybody's going to see the goal. Not everybody's going
to see the vision. And that's okay.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
They don't have to see the vision. I want to
be a criminal, man. I want to be you know,
I want to like be like one of the greatest
criminals of all time. And he looks at me.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
He's like, michol if you ever say that again, I'm
gonna send you to military school. Yeah, I'm Diego Tonoko.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now I am Diego Tonoko from on my block.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Anybody can say the lines. You can get anybody in
the world to say the block. That's not what the
studio is paying you for. That's not what the director's
searching for.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
How do you feel about fame, dude, you don't like it? Well,
this is the way I am am? I really that?
Or is that my trauma speaking?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
And I sat down sacrificed one hour of my time
and that one hour changed my entire life.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
For those of you that don't know Diego, he is
on an amazing hit show all on my block. He's
an incredible artist. Give it up. Yeah, okay, that was
the first music video.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
That was my first music video.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Ever, Yeah, we shot that within forty eight hours, and
I said, I want to start performing. We have so
much love from the incredible fans and family that I
have supporting my brand. Saga to Mia. I look, I'm
a manager of Carlo. I'm like gotta go. I want
to shoot a music video literally in like two days,
and he calls up his friends who were incredible dancers,
shout out to Eileen. We found this location the next

(01:19):
day and literally like within forty eight hours, we were
shooting the music video with my boy Brian right here,
and we did a gorilla style. You know, for so long,
I thought in my head that you needed like universal
and you needed like these big fancy red eye cameras
and all this like gear and this entire like team
and equipment and all this stuff. And I was holding

(01:39):
myself back with that belief because you yes, while you
do need you know, some production, of course, you can
accomplish so much with just a few incredible friends and
talent and you know, an incredible DP like my boy
Brian Wright. And we literally shot that so fast, and
I'm so proud of how it turned out. There were
so many headaches that.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Came with it.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Though originally we went to this the first location in
Malibu Beach where we're gonna shoot it, and the tide
washed the entire like sands. We couldn't shoot it there
and we were losing daylight, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Like Bambo's go, Gordon, Let's go to the next beach,
in the next beach.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
We ended up checking out three beaches and then finally
we saw that incredible location that we didn't plan on
the day. And I'm really proud of how it turned out.
I love how it turned out. I love, uh, you know, cinematically,
how it looks. And you know, as they say, there's
your plan and there's Life's plan. Life's plan always wins.
You got to move with it.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Well, yeah, you touched on so many things there, which
is like sorry about that because it's not but it's
it's a great way to start, you know, because you
mentioned beliefs, our ship and life m and I wasn't
gonna touch this right away, but was gonna touch it.
We already here. So belief systems is something very interesting

(02:52):
because we all have them. Yeah, right, like one day
you were a little kid walking and your mom said,
don't touch that because you get and say you're like,
you start being scared or if you know hardships, we
all have them and everything in life is I truly
believe it is a lesson. But we've been taught to
be so afraid of hard times. Anytime you go in

(03:15):
through something and you go to a friend and like, hey,
you know I'm going through this, don't worry the light
at the end of the tunnel. Nobody ever tells you.
Why don't you just sit in the fire. Like in
the fire, learn how to dance in the hardship, learn
how to be happy when everything around you seems like
it's collapsing. Because what it does is that the lessons

(03:36):
there and it touches on the last point, which is
the universe. We are, I think, the only form that
thinks that we have control, Like we really believe that
we control everything around it, and that we try the
universe does ah, you planned two days to do this
perfect beach here you go just so you learn and

(03:59):
I love them. That brings me back because we're going
to touch back on that point. Yeah, that it brings
me back. Well for why I was so excited to
have here, because I got a lot of questions about acting.
See in another life. I was Will Smith, I was
in I was just I was. I mean in my
head though in my head, you know, I don't know

(04:19):
if I can act. But I reading your story and
you know, doing the research about your life and your career,
I saw a lot of similarities with mine, first, starting
with that making that jump to l A. Talk to
me about the moment from decision. Let's go back a
couple of years to actually get in there and like
facing the reality of roommates and you know, in my case,

(04:41):
there was no fridge, there was no air in the
central area. Talk to me about those times.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
You know, we're going back to my trauma days. Huh so, yeah,
I mean, growing up, you know, I really enjoyed watching
movies with like Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Pacino, Robert de Naro,
you know, Good Fellas, Public Enemies that departed, all these movies, right,
And originally, you know, I remember telling my dad I
was like, I want to be a criminal man. I
want to be you know, I want to like be

(05:10):
like one of the greatest criminals of all time. And
he looks at me, He's like me, Well, if you
ever say that again, I'm gonna send you to military school.
He's like, I think what you want to do is
you want to be an actor, because you're looking at
all these guys pretend for a living, and they're all
incredible pretenders. They bring this character, this personality, these little
like mannerisms to life, and I see you trying to
copy them, right, So my dad says you should try

(05:31):
it on an acting school. I was like ten eleven
years old, and it actually wasn't my dad's advice that
was like the first dominant.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
But it wasn't really his advice that sent me toward
that path.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
It was more so I was watching the show called Victorious,
and for anybody that has watched, it's on Nickelodeon, and
it's like a group of teenagers in high school and
they're all like pursuing music and acting and dancing, and
it was so fascinating. And I always saw myself as
like an introvert. So I was like, ah, I could
never do that. I I wish I could do that,
but there's no way, not me, not this kid with

(06:03):
videlaigo who's wearing you know, hoodies in ninety degree heat,
Like there's no way, Like I'm gonna just go.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Skateboard and that's it.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
But then what happened was I turned sixteen, and this
belief was always there, tapping on my shoulder, like, hey,
go try it out, go try it on acting class.
And I was sixteen, my dad got me my first car.
Thank you, shout out to my dad. And I was like, well,
now I can go anywhere. And I don't live in
LA but I live close enough. It's like an hour
and a half drive.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
But I have time. I got nothing else to do, so.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
I was like, you know what, I'm going to google
the best acting studios near me and try and check
it out see if I like it.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
And you know, worst comes the worst.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
I look like a fool, but I don't know anybody there,
so it's okay. It's so far away from my home
that I'm willing to take the jump. I'm willing to
take the risk. I think for a long time, I
didn't want to take the risk because I.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Was like, oh man, I'm in my hometown.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
He got that pretty girl I go to school with,
you know, and she's in my drama class. So I
was always too shy, you know, even out of this day,
I really shy. But then I went took that class
and I fell in love instantly.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
I fell in love.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Time vanished and that's when I knew. I was like,
I have to do this for the rest of my life.
I went to sleep at night and I was like,
that was that was a day man, Like I felt
so much purpose and joy and like, I don't know,
like this weird sense of fulfillment that I just didn't
get in anything else. So then two years later, I
moved to La packed my bags, told my dad. I
was like, Hey, this is what I want to try out.

(07:26):
I don't know if I'm going to accomplish it, but
I'm willing to roll the dice, like I'm willing to
just take a risk and try it out. And he says,
you know what, like you're young.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
You need to try it out because I don't want
you to ever look back and be like, damn, I
should have tried it out while I had the time.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
And then he said, worst comes the worst, you come
back home and you start and you pick up where you.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Left off, you know what I mean. So I was like,
all right, that's what I'm gonna do. I moved there.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Luckily I had my best friend, Felipe, who moved with me,
so it wasn't as scary, you know, And I kind
of dragged him too.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
I was like, come on, bro, there's girls there for
you. You know, you're gonna have a good time. You have
fall in love.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
And he's like, you know, the silver Lake type he
had Belo Lago, I was nearby, You'll have a great time.
So I got him the you know, I tricked him
to come with me, and then I got a job.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Man.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
I started working my ass off, started doing Postmates, delivering pizzas,
man Chinese for everything, working at a wood ranch, and
then you know, at nights, I would go to acting
class twenty four seven.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
And that was my life. That was it. I didn't have.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Time for hanging out. I didn't have time for friends
back home.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
You know.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
I had a relationship kind of a crashed down just because,
you know, being truthful, I didn't have time and it
was I take full accountability. But I was just on
a mission, man, and the mission was worth it, and
I'd like to say that it paid off. But at
the time, not a lot of people believed in that mission.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Man.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
This guy, what's he doing, Man, He's going out to
La to chase his dream of acting this and that.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
But that's that's the cold truth.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Not everybody's gonna see Not everybody's gonna see the goal.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Not everybody's going to see the vision. And that's okay.
They don't have to see the vision.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
You have to see the vision, and you have to
see it as clear as day and have it out
as clear as day. And again you have to have
a plan and be able to adjust on the day
because things are always going to change.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
There's a lot of clarity to have a vision. And
I can relate to that story because I moved to
La in a similar task. I was flying back and
forth from Miami working on productions and one day I
went into the w Hotel and I saw a friend
and she was like, lex I just got here. She
was an active I just got here in this My god,
look at all the things that I'm doing. And that's

(09:28):
not like early rush where you feel like you're being active,
but like now that you're in the business, you look
back and you're like, I was actually not doing anything.
I was really thinking I was just killing time with class,
but it was it's preparation. Yeah, And she hired me
up so much that I remember going back to the
house we were staying at with my ivans here, but my

(09:49):
partner my whole career, he's here, and I remember walking
in and saying, hey, man, it's November. By December fourth,
I'm going to move to LA And I was like, so,
I hope you're going to And I remember him getting
a better saying hey, don't talk to me because he
knew I was so firm about it. But it was
that same dedication, that same idea of understanding that there

(10:12):
was something different, like you feel that, and at that age,
I didn't understand what that feeling was.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Like.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
I think when you're going through it, in hindsight, you
look back and you're like, oh, yeah, that was me
trusting my gut. But in the moment, that's not really
how you're processing the information, and that moment you're just
like blindly doing things, which to me is one of
the most important things that I try to teach people now,
which is that same feeling, that same emotion that you
feel when you're super involved in something and everything starts happening.

(10:42):
That's you breaking a belief system because in conversation you said, well,
I'm shy, yeah, right, like that kid who was wearing
hoodies all the time and we did that. I said,
I was afraid. I thought I wasn't good enough. I
like these limiting that are just we identify with and say, well,

(11:03):
this is just who I am. But the truth is
that as you enter any kind of vision, you start
realizing that that's not really who you are, that you're
actually playing a role very much like you're acting. And
one of the things I've started to practice in my life,
and that's going to lead me to my next question
is can you live your life as the watcher and

(11:26):
not as the guy acting? So what if everything that
you're experiencing in life take fear. What if instead of
saying I'm afraid, you can stop and say fear is
present because the moment you evoked I am you're just

(11:46):
bringing that energy. I am shy, but you're sitting in
a theater full of people talking, Yeah, you're really that.
You know the same thing. I would say I'm not
good enough, and I would be a comp seen things
like this and I'd be like, it's you know, the
ox line of it.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah. Definitely to me, what.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
We practice in our job, especially in the entertainment industry,
relates a lot to what we can actually live in
real life. Yeah, but back to the work. To you,
what defines a good act?

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Mmmm? Wow, that's that's a loaded question.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Or in twenty twenty five, that's it's I'll say this,
the industry has changed so much. Growing up, I used
to think that you had to be like Appuccino Robert Denio,
very mysterious, not share with the audience so that they
could buy your art and your work. But like you
said earlier, you know, we're always growing, we're always evolving, right.

(12:46):
So as an artist, sometimes we think, Oh, I don't
want to show the world who I am because that's
that's all my tricks, that's all my that's all of me,
you know, and I need to save some of me
for my art, which is true. But I think something
that a lot of actors, even myself, some times I
confuse myself with thinking I'm showing all of who I
am versus I'm showing just a piece of who I am.

(13:07):
And the reason why is because I need I need
the public to.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Know me in order to support me.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
A lot of artists they have a twisted They think, oh,
you got to support me so that you can know me.
And it's like no, no, no, they have to know
you first and then they'll support you. So I think,
in twenty twenty five, what makes a great actor and artist,
let's stick with acting. I think somebody who isn't so
attached to the outcome, whether it's getting those freaking tears

(13:34):
coming out on screen, whether it's getting that emotional heartbreak
on screen, breaking the audience's heart. I think somebody who's
in the moment, somebody who's present, and somebody who's able
to be spontaneous.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
The best acting, dude, is spontaneous.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
I've seen actors go into a scene where they're like,
all right, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that,
and they get exactly what they want and it looks
like shit. And then you get artists who go in
They're like, I have no idea what I'm gonna shoot.
I have no idea what I'm gonna do. I might cry,
I might laugh, I might scream, I might mumble.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
I don't know what I'm gonna do. And they get
the best takes ever, and every take is different too.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
And then I ask them, like, dude, how did you
do that? That little tricky did it? They're like, I
don't know, I just blacked out. I went in with preparation.
I had a ballpark of choices that I was able
to pick from. But in the moment, you just have
to be present. And it's very similar life. You have
to be present because you might miss a golden opportunity.
It might be a handshake, it might be a person
you stumble across. It might be that you shot something

(14:29):
and now you're able to share it with somebody at
an event like this, it's the smallest things that you.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Have to be ready for.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
So I think what makes a great actor is somebody
who's present and somebody who's able to play, because there's
this sense of like play that's so contagious. We see
it in actors like Jamie Fox, Will Smith, ns A.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Washington.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
They're just so loose in the moment and they're having
a good time doing their art, and that's something that
you really can't fake. You can't bs and the audience
picks that up. And when you're playing, the audience is
enjoying watching you play.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
I love h these similarities and what you're talking about
when we talk here so much on the pod, because again,
being present, right, most of us our living experiences thinking
about how it should be or what it could be
of just this, Like, I don't blame anybody, but there's

(15:19):
most of us are in this theater and from one
moment to the other where like oh, I got to
check on this thing on the phone, or maam, I
wonder how long this is going to take so I
can leave, or you know, is there going to be
something later because I want to go eat? And it
happens to all of us, right, we are all fault
to that. But another one of the good practices that

(15:39):
we talk a lot about on the pod is you're
actually just here. Like a million things have to happen
in perfect divine order for every group and every person
here to be even sitting here.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, you had to.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Come, we have to be doing this event. Millions happened,
your flight could have been canceled, a bunch of other things,
but we're all here. And one of the things that
has started to really reshape my life is this idea
of just be, not try to be, not want to
be somewhere else, pretend to be. It's just kind of

(16:19):
just be. Yeah, you are here for a reason. The
moment is putting it and the fact that you can
relate that to acting to say, hey, the best actors
there just are they don't go there today today. I
want to get it right.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
No, I spent a lot of time with a lot
of amazing actors like Will and it's just this presence,
like they can just it's not like, oh, I got
to go read this scare. He can sit here and
all of a sudden he can get really quiet. Yeah,
he can get into the moment and he can embark
whatever emotion he's trying to give you, to the point
that you you don't even know what's right, what's real

(16:53):
or not it because you're just like, WHOA, But that's
the reality of the of the moments, right is how
could you learn to be more present, more live in
not thinking about what life could be or the moment
could be.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, but what it actually is.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
And what I've learned is that it's a practice a
lot of people, including myself. I used to look at
artists and actors and entertainers and I would look at
them and be like, how did they achieve that energy
that personality? How are they so quick? And how how
does their mind work like that? And what I feel
to realize was they have done countless reps, they've been

(17:29):
in the game, they've they've failed a thousand times only
to succeed once. And I think a lot of times,
especially young artists, you know, we look at like the
grades of the people who were ahead.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Of us, and we're like, gosh shit, I'll never get there.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Like as much as like I'm trying, I don't know
if I'll ever get there, And you just have to
take it day by day. It's like, I don't know
if anybody's ever driven from Las Vegas to uh or
from California to Las Vegas, but like that road is
so dark and it's so long, and if you drive
at night, it feels like you're never gonna get there.
But you just have to focus on the on the
next it's like nine hundred feet ahead of you, and

(18:02):
just keep doing that for three hundred and thirty three miles.
It's the same thing in your journeys in life and
your career. You just have to focus on what's in
front of you. Plan obviously, but like I said, if
there's a giant car in the middle.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Of the road, you got to take a detour.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
If you say, no, I'm doing this road, my way,
this way, only you're gonna crash and you're gonna burn.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
It's not gonna work out.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
So you have to be able to adjust to what's
in front of you and again, focus on what's in.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
Front of you.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
You know a lot of people are like, you know,
including myself and my friends were always like, oh, I'm
anxious even for this.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
I was like, ah, man, what if I suck?

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Man?

Speaker 1 (18:35):
What if this that?

Speaker 2 (18:36):
But it's like, hey, you can't control tomorrow. You cannot
control tomorrow. It doesn't exist. It's not real. And if
you want to control yesterday, if you want to relate
on or uh you know, kind of dwell on what
happened yesterday, the way you can control tomorrow on the
way you can control yesterday is to focus on now.
Try try and be present and try to control whatever
that means. But try and just you know, use what's
in front of you, because then you're able to look

(18:57):
back and be like, oh shit, I actually we did
an amazing conversation, we did an amazing podcast, I had
an amazing show, we did an amazing shoot for the
for the TV show. And that's all based on literally
just being present in the moment.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Yeah. The idea of future is so interesting, right, because
I would say one hundred percent of people struggle with
the past and worry about the future. And the idea
of the future is this idea that you actually will
wake up tomorrow. Yeah. And the truth is that, like
you said, we are today who we were you know,

(19:32):
a year ago.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
The things that the habits and things we did at
that point has led us to become who we are today.
The habits and things that we will build today will
allow us to become the person of tomorrow. And that's
that's the idea of gift. We live in a society
where I think a lot is said to be earned.

(19:57):
I earned this job or I earned this roles, so
I earned my fame or I earned whatever. And earn
implies that you actually control something. And I say this

(20:22):
a lot with athletes, for example, the gift of being
a certain size or being able to have reflexes in
a certain way. That's a gift. Now, what we all
are shepherds of that gift, right, the gift of life.
It's a gift, yeah, because we don't even control our
own breath. And when it comes to career like acting

(20:46):
like being an athlete, like real estate, like any career.
We tend to really put those two thoughts together. Okay,
I'm going to start, you know, being an actor. So
I got the gift. I'm nature like, I can pull
this off, I can read, I can put emotional thought
behind these words. So I Am going to be a
good shepherd of it by practicing it. But then in

(21:08):
our lives, we don't view living as a gift, so
we treat our everyday lives without the idea of being
a good shepherd of our lives. So it's a lot
easier to eat whatever we want. It's a lot easier
to just you know, imp around. There's a lot easier
to stay lazy at home and that doing it. It's
a lot easier to just take life and say, oh
but I'm just wilding out and living what I want, Like,

(21:31):
are you being a good shepherd of your gift? Because
the truth is, it's a gift and we don't control
when it will end, we don't control when it started.
And enacting what I wanted to learn actually, because if
really interested in it is there's a script and there's
an idea in a word. Now, the art of bringing

(21:54):
those ideas into life and making them become something, but
then taking them with freedom towards this ending point. What
did you do to shipperd that gift?

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (22:05):
I think there's this quote in a movie called The
A Star Is Born with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.
You guys have seen if you haven't watched, it's an
incredible movie. But there's this quote Lady Gaga says, or
it might have been Bradley Cooper's father, the actor of
the place's father in the movie, and he says, it's
all up to the artist and how they interpret the same.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Chorus, verse, pre chorus.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Everybody could sing it, you know, some seem amazing, some
not as good, but it's up to the artist to
really interpret that.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's the same thing with acting.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Anytime I get a scene, it's anybody could say the lines.
You can get anybody in the world to say the lines.
That's not what the studio is paying you for. That's
not what the casting director is hiring you for. That's
not what the director is searching for. The director wanted
that he would cast the exact same person to play
every single role. Right, the artist has to interpret the
material they have to make it personal, specific, and it

(23:05):
has to make sense. It's acting is like connecting the dots.
A lot of times, if you watch bad acting, the
reason why it's bad is because it's not personal, it's
not specific, and it's not connected. They're doing an idea
of what they think they should be doing, and it's
gonna come out bland.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
You know.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Sometimes some people can't even like really describe why it's
bad acting. It's bad acting because it doesn't mean anything
to them, and if it doesn't mean anything to them,
it's not gonna mean anything to the audience. So I
think that's truly one of the biggest tips that I
could give to any aspiring actor. It's any time you
read a script, and I'm guilty of this too. Sometimes
I really can't connect to the script. Sometimes I'm like,

(23:46):
I who wrote this?

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Like this is awful? Like really bad.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
You know what you have to do is you have
to play around. You have to improvise the scene, the dialogue.
You're like, Okay, maybe I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Say that line, but let me for rehearsal six.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Let me just play around with in my own language,
the way I would speak, the way I talk to
my friends, the way I talk to my girl, my boys.
You know, let me kind of mess with the dialogue
a little bit so I can really feel it and
connect to it. Because language is the last thing that's
important in acting. The words are the last thing that's important, really,
given you have to honor the writer. Some directors are like, hey,
every comma, every period, every word you have to say otherwise,

(24:20):
you know, and you got to respect that. As an actor, right,
you're part of the vision. You're not the as much
as actors take all the glory, you know, they're a
part of the vision. So really, I think the words
are the last important thing. The behavior, the emotion, how
specific it is, how personal it is to you, That
is the most important thing. I promise you. Maybe not Fincher, right,

(24:42):
but if there's a scene and you're off by a
couple of words, but the emotion is so personal, so specific,
so spontaneous, the director every time's gonna be like, that's
the fucking take.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
We're not using the other ones.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
That's the one, because it's just if it's personal to you,
if it means a lot to you, it's going to
mean a lot to the audience.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
And we're connecting with cinema.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
We're connecting with movies and TV shows because at the
end of the day, we're human beings. We want to
feel connected. We want to feel like we're a fly
on the wall kind of observing the story. We can
all relate, whether it's it's your trauma, my trauma. Somebody
out there you know has trauma on a certain level
that they can connect to. So I think if you're
vulnerable about that and you're open about it, and you're like,

(25:23):
you know what, this is who I am, this is
how I interpret the scene, that's what's going to make.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
It great talking about on my block. So you walk
in first big.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Role, Yeah, it explodes.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah. Now, the great thing about television, I think, especially
in today's world, is that it builds a cult following, right,
And with that cult following, you also get a lot
of expectations because now you have to live up to
those fans being like we want this, yeah, as an
actor and as someone that's a part of the whole

(25:58):
vision on the show. After season one, this show blows
up how hard was to keep up the expectations of
an audience that wanted the character to go somewhere. So
when they were writing when you guys were doing the
table reads. For those of you that don't know, when
you're doing any kind of television film, you you do
a table read where everybody sits and you kind of
go through the line so everybody can get a good cent.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Notes, and then you're like, shit, did I say that?
It was like awful? What happened? Then? Why are they
taking notes?

Speaker 3 (26:26):
Thankfully, I've never sat in your position. I only sat
on the guy I've taken the notes to say, yeah, yeah.
How hard was it after the success of that first
season to keep that fire going?

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Mmm?

Speaker 2 (26:39):
I think personally the fire was really hard to keep
going the first season for me because I felt this
huge amount of imposter syndrome. I was like, dude, I'm
going to get fired tomorrow. I don't know what day,
but I'm going to get far. There's I do not
belong here. I do not belong here. I've been taking
acting class for nine months. There's no way, Like I
just had this huge amount of imposter syndrome and how

(27:00):
I've been so fast? That happened my first year when I
moved to LA moved to LA at eighteen. At nineteen,
I was working on a Netflix show so I had
this huge amount of imposter syndrome, and you know, I
just kept I kept having to tell myself over and
over again, you belong here, you belong here, you belong here.
And eventually what happens is you just make it like

(27:20):
across the finish line and you can breathe, like, oh
my god.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
I finished the show.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
You know, luckily there's no reshoots, right, But actually the
second season I came into it kind of with uh,
this looseness and freedom. Actually, like the second season the
best out of the entire four seasons.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
That was probably my That was.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Probably the most the riskiest I've ever been with acting,
just because I wanted to play so badly. I saw
the response that the audience had to the show, and
I was like, oh, hell yeah, you guys like it
that okay.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
So it gave me like this illusion of confidence.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
But I walked into the next season and I was like,
all right, let's play around, let's take some risks. I
feel like I had to keep that far in my
own personal life because when you're.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
When you're nineteen and you know you're getting thrown money and.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
You're getting thrown opportunity, everybody tells you how great you
are on this and that and all that.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Shit's an illusion.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
By the way, it kind of like it didn't get
to my head and he goo wait, but it got
into my head in.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
A way where I was like, I'm set. I'm good, bro,
I'm good. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
I don't need an audition, you know, I'm good. I
would show up to like meetings with directors and I'd
be like, you know, I'd come from like a party,
no sleep, I'd go, you know, show up like just
not prepared as I should have been, you know, because
again I had this which worked for some parts.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
As an artist, sometimes the chaos is good, but sometimes.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
There's a healthy balance to it, right, Yeah, I feel
like I kind of deprive myself.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Of this creative fire. You know.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
There's a lot of things that again I look back
in time, I'm like, dude, why weren't you hovering over
the director? Because now I'm really fascinated with directing, and
I'm like, I did forty episodes and I didn't once
hover over my director to see what they were doing
or ask questions in regards like the technical aspect or
the art side of it. And I look back now

(29:05):
and I'm like, gim men, So you know, like, how
did you not you know what? But you can't beat
yourself up when I was young. But yeah, I think
that creative fire was something that I had to keep
up more so, and the way that I've you know,
kind of gotten that creativity back, that fire has actually
been through music truly, because it's very similar. It's strange,
but it's really similar. You know, you have a song,

(29:26):
it's the same thing as having a movie. You do
the your present, you do the performance, you do this,
then you do the marketing right and again you have
to have the sense of play. If it sounds too
like you're not having fun, then it's gonna read. So
I just got that spark back truly with my creative fire.
And I'm having a blast right now, you know, creating content.
My friends in the studio, just messing around, trying different things,

(29:46):
you know. So yeah, I actually just got that you
know fire right now with music.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
With movies, it's still there.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
I got a few more projects lined up, so I'm
excited to go on set and kind of have that
fire back.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
You know.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
How do you feel about fame, dude?

Speaker 1 (29:59):
It's in the it's an illusion. I think. I think
it's ah. I always tell the story. My friends are
always laughing.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
I used to go to this Ride Aid after acting
class every single day, and uh, anytime I had a
bad class, actually, and I'd be like, fuck, I was
a terrible class. I was like, let me go get
some ice cream, you know, cheer myself up, you know.
And I remember going with this ride A yeah, Nina.
She she never paid me a time of the day,
never noon, come in. She wouldn't even bad an eye, bro.

(30:25):
And I was just saying, you know, in eighteen nineteen,
you know, and given so I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
Either if I saw me, you know, I you know.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
But you know what happened was the show came out
one day and and then I was still go in
acting class after that.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
And then I pull up to the riot aid store.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Same ride Aid, same girl, same ice cream, same everything,
same cone, everything, you know, same outfit.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
I think too, you know, it's just different, same outfit, right.
But you know, at the time, everybody you know saw
the show. So I was like, all right, you look, said,
oh my god, on a show. Can I get a
photo please? I'm a big fan this and that. I'm
like I've been combing.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Her every day for nine months, like, and you never
once even here to like ask me how my day
was nothing, you know what I'm saying. Or when I
would ask you how your day was going, you know,
you'd roll your eyes. And it was one of those
things where it kind of hit me. I was like, Oh,
it's this is all an illusion. The public rewards you,
as an artist or as an entrepreneur, as whatever you
are for what you do in private. So what you

(31:19):
do in private gets rewarded by the public. Sometimes we
start getting a twister. We're like, oh, everything I'm doing
in public is making me loved by the public. Nor
it's what you do behind the curtain. All that hard work,
all those late nights where nobody's watching, all of that.
You have to trust the vision again, all of that
is going to get you to whatever that that you know,

(31:42):
fame is, or I like to say exposure, you know,
because your kind of gets you know, thrown to the world,
so everybody sees it.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
I think it's an illusion. I think it gets to
a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
I think when I was young, I think I kind
of like, I like the attention truly, when I was
younger now it's it's more so I look at it
as tool. At the end of the day, Studios they
love numbers. So yeah, I'm kind of just I'm actually
learning to have a lot of fun with it right now,
just like not be so serious about it and just
kind of just kind of fucking like play, you know,

(32:12):
with with social media and all the stuff, even the
content putting right now, Like it's I'm not trying to
be serious at all. Half the time, I'm just trolling.
But I'm having so much fun doing it, and it's
you know, and.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
It's it's gotten us a lot of cool opportunities.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
I find fam really interesting, and I've been blessed enough
to be around a lot of famous people throughout my career.
I've received a lot of acclaim through my work with
those people. But one of the things that I always
saw from the outside and even experienced it myself, is
you'll be really famous in one room very little in another. Yeah,

(32:49):
And I've seen this with a lot of people. I've
seen an active friend of mine who can walk into
one room and everybody recognizes and everybody's like, oh my god,
it's like this is incredible, and then walk in to
wanting to go to a really hot party during the
Grammys and the answer saying, hey, bro, I don't know
who you understand that and I and seeing the conflict.

(33:10):
You know, I've also been able to see the top
of the food chain, super extremely famous, go through hardship
and the crowd is like, ah, well, nah, I'm good
if you don't come to my party today. It's really
interesting because the concept of people are admiring I always
ask why, Like, why is the reason we admire people

(33:34):
at a level of die hard fame, because this is
a different thing where you say, hey, I respect what
you do, man, like you know, I admire you, I
get inspired by you. And then there's the oh my god,
I just want to like touch you and have a
picture with you and like and that level of craziness
in it. Yeah, And this is a conclusion I came

(33:54):
in now. This is just my thoughts. Disclaimer, this is
not a certified conclusion by the Department of whatever it is,
but this is my conclusion. We are all superheroes, but
we've been programmed by society, by our way of being

(34:16):
taught when we grew up to lack so we always
feel like, well, if I don't have the rolegs of
the Gucci, then I'm not good enough. And they sell
you that because that's what they want you to feel,
like if you got to have the latest bag. You know,
if I don't do this, I won't get to heaven
or I won't And you grew up with this identity

(34:38):
and this idea that you're just not enough. And so
I've interviewed a lot of really successful people on this show,
and most including this one. Sitting here talking, we talk
about the imposter syndrome, and it's how many of us
are accomplishing things while sitting down saying this is going

(35:00):
to crash because I'm not good enough. And I started
to really think, like, how is it possible that you're
at the level of fame or a level of wealth,
like you're at the premiere of a movie, you're anger.
I mean, you're so good that your first show was
a hit show? Like how good are you that you are?
But yet you don't feel And I've truly believe that
the reason why we admire people and are so crazy

(35:22):
is because we see ourselves. Because the obsession we have
with superheroes is because we see ourselves. We see what
we could be, and we feel I generally think that
we all look at that and say, how could be me?
And I have this thing that I always share with

(35:44):
my partner where I say, I'll send them something like
this company went for a billion dollars, and I say,
why not us, Like we could do it? Yeah, why
couldn't we start a coffee brand, which, by the way,
would be great If I feel on this, why not
start a coffee ran? Why not start a film festival?
Why not be on a hit show? And so I

(36:09):
find that a lot of the reason why once you
have the fame comes that uncomfortableness is the same reason.
If you look at most superhero movies, the conflict is
the superhero doesn't believe he's good enough, right Superman doesn't
know why he's here in that new film, for example,

(36:30):
and the crisis is that he grew up believing that
he was here to say planet Earth. And then you know,
the bad guy uses the you know, Lex Luthor uses
the yeah greatly the video to tell him iron Man, no,
I could never be that. And we love those movies

(36:50):
because we're watching our own story. Yeah, we know we
have all this potential. Everybody here has that potential. We
wanted to fly, and now we fly in a tin can.
We wanted to go to the depths of the ocean,
and now we do it. There's people here that can post,
like yourself, one story about a product and sell the

(37:13):
product out. People here that started selling one house for
the first time and now sell a million dollar houses
or start you know, I know a lot of people
here started a film company and now are Oscar winners
or whoever is. I truly believe we are all superheroes
going through an inner struggle and an inner battle of

(37:34):
identifying and believing that we can actually fly. And that's
why I think fame feels so uncomfortable because in hindsight
it creates a lot of pressure, but it's a beautiful thing.
To your point. It gives you opportunities. I always say, like,
the best part of my life is not the wealth,

(37:54):
is the wealth of experiences. The fact that I can
say I want a film festival and now I want
diego and you would be kind enough to say, I'll go.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
Talk to lex.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
You know, I came for the coffee, definitely for the coffee,
which is great.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Zero sixteenth quick, I should I get.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
That brain plugged and so that brings me to my
next what do you think life has been trying to
teach that you keep running.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Away two things. I think one is is to not
take life so seriously. I think for a long a
majority of my career I was like, everything has to
be perfect. Everything the way I talk, the way I
show up to that carpet, the way everything has to
be perfect.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
And I think for a long time I had a
lot of friends.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Tell me, like bro Chow, how like that, not everything
has to be the way you want it to be.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Man like relax or like.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Show the world who you are, Like we're trying to
be this this person that you know you it's it's
going to exhaust you, it's going to burn you out.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
And I think for a long time I was like, Nope,
that's not the way the movie stars, that's not the
way the you know, that's how my idols were.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
And now I'm coming to realize it's so liberating just
being yourself. Obviously, work on yourself, you know, if you
don't know certain things, don't put up a front and
act like you know what you're talking about and lie,
you know, educate yourself, learn practice repetitions again, you know,
and then just be you. Like it's the most liberating

(39:31):
thing being able to come on a stage or go
anywhere and.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Just be myself.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
I don't have to be this persona or this illusion
of what I think I have to be. It gives
you this freedom that's it's really indescribable.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
You're just like you.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
It's really hard to explain, but I'm just starting to
realize it and learn it, not just like me as
a here being present, but like literally just on social
media too.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
For the longest time, I was like, dude, everything has
to be everything, And it's like, what.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
I failed to realize is, man, people don't connect with
perfect anymore because.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
We're all flawed. I'm flawed, You're flawed. Everyone here is flawed.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
We all have our flaws and insecurities and trauma and vulnerabilities.
And I think for the longest time, I thought I
had to be perfect, and that's what was separating me
from really connecting with my audience, with my people, because

(40:37):
they're like, oh, I could never be him, Like he's
doing this, he's doing that.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
It's like, or did you guys also know that?

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Like I wore long sleep tea shirts from the time
I was nine to like eighteen, I had the craziest,
most disgusting tamline on my fingertis because I was so
insecure about my skin when I was like a teenager.
Like and now that I'm sharing all this stuff, people
are like, oh my god, I have it alago too,
like how how did you manage it? And I'll DM
them back like, yo, you just gotta be confident and
hit the gym, do this, you know, eat how and
you'll feel good if you feel good mentally to start

(41:03):
to like show the world that you are good. So
that's one thing I'm learning. And another thing that I'm
learning too is letting go of the past. I think
I have a hard time with that still to this day,
if I'm being honest, I have a hard time letting
go of the past.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
And I'm always like, oh, man, if only I would have.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
Done this move at that time with this person and
made this move, I would be on top of this.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
And that and that da da da da. And it's
one of those things where it's just not real. Man.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
It's it's not real and and it's it's just such
a mental roadblock to carry. And there's a difference between
baggage and luggage. You know, one just feels like the
weight of the world is on you, and another one
is like, hell, yeah, I got my bag, I got
my stuff in here, or what I need my headphones?
Like pull them out, you know. So one feels like

(41:47):
a privilege and another one kind of feels like torment.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Where it's just haunting you twenty four to seven.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
And you've got to understand that in life, Yeah, you
can try to carry all that baggage with you, but
it's only going to slow you down. It is only
going to weigh you down. It is only going to
slow your journey down from getting to where you want
to be. So there comes a point where you know,
you just got to say, you know what I am,
what I am, I've done, what I've done, this is
who I am.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
I'm alive.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
I have friends that have passed, you know, due to drugs.
I have friends who you know, pass from leukemia. And
every day I wake up now and I'm like, dude, God,
I'm just grateful to be here.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Give me my health. I'll take care of the rest.
You know.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Maybe you know, give me an opportunity with lexbot it
or you have to do a podcast, and that'd be cool,
you know, that'd be cool. But at the end of
the day, if you have your health, guys, you have
more than enough.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
You have the potential to create anything.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
Talking about finding yourself, we say that a lot easier
than what it is, right, Like, it's like, yeah, but
this is just who I am. I used to say
that all the time. That was my way to get
away with things. Oh you don't like it, well, this
is the way I am. And then I would sit
back after and sit like, am I really that? Or
is that my trauma speaking? Or am I really that?

(42:59):
Is that a belief system that I believe that you know,
I can't do this because it's who I am, Like,
I don't want to do that, because I don't. What
have you found to be helpful to start identifying the
things in you that are coming off to be a

(43:20):
truer version of who you are? Because I think there's
mixed Like I said, there's mix on that. For me,
it was a lot of turnoil. And it wasn't until
I started understanding that this idea of right or wrong,
this idea of the things that I thought are so
fragile because I'll get you know, you could tell me

(43:41):
something today and I'll take it a certain way because
I'm just stressed out, and tomorrow you'll say the same
thing and I'll be like, oh, yeah, that was And
I started happening to me with a lot of things
that I would say, oh, but this is just who
I am. And it wasn't until I started to really
identified more importantly, what was the essence that I wanted
to live, Like success was one of those things because

(44:03):
I came in an era and I'm a lot older
than you, but I came in an era where all
you got taught was like you better hustle. You want
to be successful, you better work twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week. Matter of fact, included eighthing in there,
just because like forget your food, work hard. Be an
intern like nowadays interns. I have interns now, and it's like,

(44:24):
oh my god, you guys are living a life. You
guys get coffee breaks and salaries and stuff. I was
an intern. I said you better go get me the
ten coffees, and if one of them comes not hot,
You're going back and getting them all over again. And
so I grew up with this idea and this mentality
around success. That it meant I had to sacrifice everything.

(44:45):
And that was my first fight because if you would
ask me two years ago, who are you like? I
am where I'm the Sea of Neon sixteen, I am
very successful. I worked my ass off. You asked me that. Today,
I just say, hey, I'm a m That's a huge
change for me because my whole identity was around the

(45:10):
who I was. So I would walk in and say, hey,
I'm so and So's manager. Yeah, That's how I started
the conversation in order to feel valued, so that you
would think I'm interested enough to talk to so I
can get what I needed done, which, while it served
because we live in a world where this counts, it
became my identity. It became the character I started to

(45:34):
play in order to do and I started to challenge
that by completely realizing, what if I do less? What
if I my body today doesn't feel like I can
get up, I'm gonna give it a rest.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
What if I don't work the twenties something hours a
day every single day. What if I don't take the
things are stressing me? Just stress alone like I used
to be all the time, and I could just throw
a freaking phone off like I was that guy. And
I started like, why am I stressed this idea that
if I don't do this right now, I'm going to fail?

(46:16):
Just to believe the idea that if I work less
I'm not gonna make more comes back to, oh, well
then I'm actually earning this. And if I'm earning this,
is that really true? Because I can you know, God forbid,
and I have a next breath. So I started to
let go. So I started to find that in my

(46:39):
personal life, the finding who I was was by letting
go of anything that tied me to something. So the
idea was, if I don't work hard, I'm gonna be okay. Well,
actually I'm gonna work less and see what happens. I'm
gonna take more time off. And that came. I had

(47:00):
a call with a friend of mine who's a billionaire,
and this is for all business people here, because it
changed my life. We were talking on the phone and
he said, so, what's your plans this year? And I said, Steve,
I don't even know what my tomorrow looks like. And
he laughed and he said, ah, you're not rich enough.

(47:20):
And I was like, you're an asshole, and he said, no, like, see,
why do you not know what the rest of your
year looks like? I was like, Steve, because my life
is every day I'm hustling in it. He says, like,
are you a CEO or you're an employee? And I said,
I don't understand it. He said, well, if you're a CEO,

(47:41):
your only goal is to create the vision. If you're
executing the vision, that means you've hired wrong. You can't
create a vision and have clarity unless you take time.
You can't take time unless you know when you're taking.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
He said.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
You are making decisions for your life every single day
while sitting in a car listening to hard rock music,
trying to decide right or wrong. So first, there's no
right or wrong. Second, get yourself out of the car.
You are going to miss one hundred percent of the opportunities,

(48:20):
none of the shots you don't take, of the shots
you don't see. Most of us don't see because we
are trying to do so. We spent our whole lives doing, doing, doing,
doing doing doing doing, doing, doing doing doing so many
times a friend invites and says, hey, let's go to dinner.

(48:40):
To no, I can't do it. Tonight I got and
you stop realizing that at that dinner your life could
have change. I have a friend here who actually is
a partner at zero sixty and we've met multiple times,
but in a year we didn't. We would always just
meet and time we were like, oh, let's do something,

(49:01):
we never did it. And when we were looking at
the building for certain success, said, man, we've known each
other now for almost two years, and I was too
busy to give you even five minutes. Today he's a
partner because now we give our He jokes, he's like, oh,
I'm on calling. Now you actually call me. But it

(49:25):
impacted me because we always hear you missed one hundred
percent of the chances you don't take, And he said, nope,
the ones you don't see. And the idea of right
or wrong, the idea that there's this thing that's happening,
he said, it's just like a clarity. Yeah, when you

(49:49):
don't have clarity, you can't build a vision, you can't
even build yourself.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
And I want to add on to that, I think
social media right now, in the time of twenty four
to seven comparison, is not only giving us that lack
of clarity, but it's blurring our visions as individuals, as entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
As creatives.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
So then it makes us think, I got to work, work, work, work, work,
work work. What you fail to realize is when you
sometimes when you try to take ten steps forward, it
might cost you eighteen steps back. But by taking one
step back, not one hundred, you know, a thousand, just
one step back to breathe, get that vision, get that clarity,
it might give you a thousand steps forward. It's like

(50:31):
in I don't know if anybody watches mixed martial arts here,
but you don't need to throw a thousand punches.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
You just need that one shot to get that ko.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Sometimes it's actually the opposite the martial artist who's throwing
a thousand punches. It ends up getting knocked oous sometimes right,
sometimes by decision, a complicated sport.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
But what I'm getting at is you need that clarity.
You need to take that step back to see the
opportunity to strike and then go full force.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yeah, clarity is really important. I heard you talk on
a podcast he did with one of your cast members
from on my Block, and you said, the truth is
the most important thing.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
What is your truth? I think My truth is always evolving.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
I think as of now realizing, like I've been saying,
I'm not perfect.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
I'm very flawed.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
I got a lot of things in my life that
you know, I've battled with and I'm still battling with.
But every day I choose to embrace them. I used
to ignore things and just let it go, and eventually
what happened was it all cook up and then it explode. Right,
So I'm learning, you know, my truth is knowing that
I have so much to learn, knowing that I'm not.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
You know, I said this the other day. I will
always look at myself as an upcoming artist, artist, actor, entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Because I don't want there to ever be a day
where I'm like done, it's done, everything's good. I don't
got to do nothing, because that's exactly how everything comes
crashing down. Every day is day one. Okay, day one,
we're starting fresh. I don't care that L. Don't let
an L make break you, and don't let a W
break you either. There's a lot of times people get
whether it's business, music, acting, they get a W and

(52:08):
they're like we're done, we're set, that's it, and it's like, okay,
bet that's gonna be your downfall right there. So I
think my truth is accepting myself as an upcoming artist,
actor and human being too. There's so many things that
I need to learn and that I'm working on and
being okay with that.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
You know.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
I used to go into Barnes and Nobles as a
kid man ice to see every book.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
I want to read every book.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
I need to know everything that's in here, like I
want the information to every source, and that would overwhelm
me so much that I wouldn't do anything. I wouldn't
pick up the first book, so I'd be like, oh,
I want this book, and this book, I'm gonna read
ten pages here and then ten pages there, and then
it's like, where is your focus going?

Speaker 1 (52:47):
You're trying to spread yourself thin. You have to focus.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
It's one step at a time, and eventually what happens is,
you know, it's like that's saying, you build that house
brick by brick, and before you know you have an
entire house. The same thing with life, business relationships with
your partner, you know. So, yeah, I guess that's my
truth right now, just understanding and accepting that it's a ride.

(53:11):
I'm on the ride for better or worse. It's gonna
get bumpy. You know, there's gonna be a shitty tomorrow,
there's gonna be a really bad tomorrow, there's gonna be
a great tomorrow. And understand that that's not gonna make me,
you know. So yeah, that's that's my truth.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
As now, I got a couple of pictures to show,
but before we do that, I think it's really interesting
because I really believe in the power of words, right,
and like you, I used to say, tomorrow is gonna
be shit there with this, you know, And I used
to say life is a roller coaster, and I was like,
so you have two choices in the roller coaster, right,
You're either or you're like yeah, yeah, And then someone

(53:49):
told me, why don't you just not get on the
roller coaster? And it's like that same thought and idea
of everything is just perception. So if you perceive everything
that life throws at you as just is, yeah, it's
not either good or bad. It's you could emotionally feel it,
you can cry, you can smile, but it just is.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
And with that, there's some life moments that your team
has been really amazing not sharing with us. I wanted to.
I want to give you a seat one emotion. Uh,
these pictures bring to you something. I have a picture
of you. Oh that's an oldie. That's an oldie.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
That's when I was leaving my hometown to move to
l A.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Man, look at my cheese a baby?

Speaker 3 (54:41):
What was that kid thinking of that?

Speaker 1 (54:42):
I was so dude, I'll beyond. I was so sad.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
But I was so sad and nervous and scared, and
I was like, dude, I think I just messed up
my life moving to l A.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
I was like, this is going to be awful.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
And I had like a girl girlfriend back home, and
I was like, that relationship is not going to go well.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
But what happens is you just you know.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Uh. I had two choices. I was like, well, no
one's holding a gun in my head. I don't have
to move. I want to move into privilege to be
able to move. So I was like, you know what,
I'm sad, but this will pass. This will pass. Oh man,
I was mad right there. They misspelled my name. I
said Diego.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
I was like, who the hell? But yeah, I was.
I was mad that day. Actually that day, I was
actually like I was in third grade.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
And I was like, man, one day, no one's gonna
misspell my name, but they still misspelled.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
They miss say it to you like diego dinko.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Okay, everybody says my last name all wrong, including you.
But I'm gonna let us to life. Oh I just kidding,
what about this one?

Speaker 1 (55:41):
All right?

Speaker 3 (55:42):
All right?

Speaker 1 (55:43):
That was That was the day.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
I remember listening to a song called this is the
Day by the the they played and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Uh, but I listened. That was back in twenty seventeen.
I listened.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
I bumped that song in the morning. I remember listening
to that song and the lyrics.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Everybody's ever heard it, but.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
It goes, this is the day your life will truly change.
And that day my life truly changed. And that day
I showed up prepared. It's crazy what happened. Studying for
one hour changed my life. I wasn't going to go
to that audition. I wasn't gonna show up. I was like,
this audition this is gonna be you know, it's not
gonna do anything for me. It's just another audition. I'm

(56:21):
gonna get told. No, I was going to go out
that night, you know, I had plans with friends. And
what happened was I said, no, you know what, I'm
going to sit down.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
I'm going to.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Study because this is part of the goal, this is
part of the mission. This is the character that I
want to be in my life. You know, somebody who
shows up, whether it's a relationship, work, business, whatever. And
I sat down, sacrificed one hour of my time, and
that one hour changed my entire life. Is the next day,
I showed up prepared, I was in the moment, able
to play. But who I was in that moment came
from who I was yesterday because I was just prepared

(56:53):
and given. You know, I was at the ABE, so
you know, in the audition room, I told the other guys,
I was like, I wouldn't even go in there. I
just killed it, like you got no shot, you know,
try to get in their heads, you know, as a kid.
But yeah, I just that they changed my life and
uh and I'm so grateful in it. And it's it's
truly crazy to see what again, what you were saying earlier,
When you're present, the amount of opportunities that are available,

(57:15):
you can see all the shots now. You know you
said earlier you missed one hundred percent of all the
shots you can't even see.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
That's so true. But what happens when you can see them,
and what happens when you're prepared, it's a different game.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
So we always end the podcast with one question. We've
spoken about the power of words, the power of being present,
and what I've realized is we're a lot more thoughtful
and nice to others than we are with ourselves. But
the thing is, you're with yourself more than you are
with anybody. So what is one word or one phrase

(57:51):
the diego needs to hear in order to take this
day and the rest of this week in a different way.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Yeah, let it go. Give it to God. Truly, at
the end of the night, let it go, give it
to God. Don't dwell on it, don't beat yourself up.
All that's gonna do is cause you anxiety, sleepless nights,
and it's gonna affect you like a like a bad
Domino cycle, you know.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
So let it go. Give it to God.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
You wake up as day one, Start fresh, whatever argument
you have your spouse, start fresh.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Hey, look how you doing, how you feeling? You feel better?

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Start fresh, because you never know, man, it might be
your last day. But you know, today's beautiful day. So
let's let's leave it, you know, end off on a
positive note. You know, let go give it to God
and do it with love.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
Yeah, love that. Thank you so much, and thank all
of you guys for being a part of your reverses guys.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
I appreciate you. Thank you, guys. You versus you as
a production of Neon sixteen and Entertained Studios in partnership
with the Iheartmichael to that podcast network for more podcasts,
listen to the iHeartRadio app, app podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.