Conversations with Alya Lei

Marti Mongiello - genius, veteran, director, producer, author, CEO, White House chef and the list goes on and on...

Marti's current television series, Inside the President's Cabinet, launched in 2019 and is renewed for two additional seasons into 2022.

Chalis Romero grew up in the Salt Lake City Valley, Utah. She graduated from Cal State University, Fullerton with a degree in Radio, TV & Film. First job in "the industry" was in reality TV. After a couple of years she got a job in scripted TV as an office PA and then as a producer's assistant. She was accepted into the DGA Training program in 2013 and has been working as an assistant director since 2016 on shows such as HBO's Barry, NCIS, Veep and many more!

Lauren Buglioli - currently a series regular on Netflix's "Florida Man" (currently in production) was born in Los Angeles where she worked as an actress before moving to London, England for middle and high school, where she continued to work in film, television and theatre. She's a graduate of the American School in London… so don't be disappointed by the lack of accent.

Her training includes: London's Central School of Speech and Drama, LAMDA, NYU, Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, UCB, iO West, Lesly Kahn and Margie Haber. Lauren is currently shooting "Florida Man" for Netflix alongside Edgar Ramirez and Paul Schneider. She most recently worked on Tyler Perry's a "Jazzman's Blues" and "Vendetta" alongside Clive Standen, Theo Rossi, and Bruce Willis.

Lauren is represented by Privilege Talent, Brilliant Talent Management, DGRW and Sovereign Talent.

She is the mother of two very sassy dogs, and aspires to own a tiny home in the mountains. As a former city girl, who is known to scream expletives at bees, this is both shocking and alarming but proof that ANYTHING is possible.

An accomplished producer and showrunner with an extensive background in science fiction television, Montreal-born Joseph Mallozzi began his career in the entertainment industry as an animator and later as a writer. He worked developing more than 100 hours of television programming for various children's series, including Animal Crackers, The Little Lulu Show, and Caillou.

Joseph Mallozzi transitioned to live-action television as a writer-producer with FOX's teen sitcom Student Bodies, writing nearly two dozen episodes throughout the series' 65-episode run. Following the conclusion of Student Bodies, Joseph Mallozzi remained with FOX as a contributing writer for television series, including Big Wolf on Campus, The Lost World, and Largo Winch.

With his writing partner Paul Mullie, he joined the critically-acclaimed sci-fi series Stargate: SG-1 in its fourth season, and remained with the franchise as a scriptwriter, showrunner, and executive producer throughout the Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate: Universe programs. After eleven years with Stargate, Joseph Mallozzi branched out to pursue independent projects, launching the comic "Dark Matter" in 2012 and the television series of the same name in 2015.

He regularly posts updates on new projects, interesting foods, and his dogs at JosephMallozzi.com as well as on Twitter (@barondestructo) and Facebook (@josephmallozzi).

Shawn Maus is sincere, frank, curious, ambitious and humorous – or so he's been told.

Writer, mentor, screenwriter, playwright and life adventurer. Shawn is the creator and host of the podcast "Art in Your Heart." His TV pilot "Soulcatch" was a quarterfinalist in the Chicago Screenplay Awards and his feature script "Boxes" has received numerous recognitions including being named a semifinalist in the Screencraft Drama Screenplay contest.

Shawn has produced three short films, including indie film circuit favorite Living Under Linda's Desk, and has received the Award of Excellence from the Iowa Motion Picture Association.

Shawn is a producer for the upcoming Fashion Reality show "The Collective" which will be streamed all over the world in October. His website is shawnmaus.net and you can hear his podcast "Art in Your Heart" wherever you get your podcasts.

Our guest is Karina Ruth Walters, who is a proud member of the Casting Society of America (CSA) and has 15 years of casting experience (including S.W.A.T., UnREAL, Burn Notice, The Shield, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows, The Watch). She has worked as a full Casting Director since 2012 and prior to that, she was a Casting Associate, honing her craft with some of the top Casting Directors in the business.

In early 2018 Karina began working with Revolution Financial Management. It was her desire to help actors and other creative professionals, who often struggle with fluctuating incomes and the lack of company retirement plans, that first ignited her passion for helping others get on track financially, though you certainly don't have to be in a creative field to enlist her help!

Based on her own experience, she saw the importance of educating Americans on the fundamental principles of building wealth, believing that everyone, regardless of income or background, should have increased financial literacy. For the past 3 years, she has made it her mission to help people plan for a greater quality of life by learning about and implementing basic but powerful financial concepts.

David Dean Bottrell has played guest star roles on shows like "Modern Family," "The Blacklist," "Law & Order: SVU," "Mad Men," "Longmire," "Rectify," "Justified," "True Blood," "Bones," "Castle," "Criminal Minds," "CSI," "NCIS," "Ugly Betty," "iCarly" and "Boston Legal" to name just a few. His many theatre credits include Second Stage, Long Wharf, Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, plus sketch and storytelling shows at Dixon Place, Comedy Central Stage and Joe's Pub at the Public Theatre. He has been a columnist for Backstage.com, written off-Broadway plays and screenplays for many Hollywood studios. He created and for three years co-produced the critically acclaimed Sci-Fest LA: The Los Angeles Science Fiction One-Act Play Festival. His first book, WORKING ACTOR was published in 2019 by Ten Speed Press. His current one-man show, DAVID DEAN BOTTRELL MAKES LOVE: A ONE-MAN SHOW will be released as an audio book by Random House in 2020.

Yvonne Senat Jones - series regular on Tyler Perry's "Ruthless" shares with us how she was cast as "Tally" and also has a big reveal!!

Yvonne was born in Dallas, TX. She is of Bolivian-Haitian descent and is fluent in Spanish. She fell in love with acting at El Camino College under the instruction of Mr.Ron Scarlata. She transferred to Cal State Long Beach and graduated with a BA in Theatre Arts then received a full scholarship to University of South Carolina where she earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Acting.

She immediately began teaching theatre arts because it was one of the few teaching positions that only required a college degree. She quickly learned that she loved it and began working with a non-profit organization, City Hearts LA, an organization which brings the arts to schools that wouldn't normally be able to fund an arts program.

Her first big break came when Emmy-Award winning casting director , Robi Reed, cast her in the role of Robyn Crawford in the BET movie "The Bobby Brown Story". The cast won the NAACP Image Award for best TV Movie.

A year later she booked the recurring role of Tally in Tyler Perry's Hit Drama "The Oval". Dir.Perry then expanded her role to a series regular lead in his spin off, "Ruthless".

Her previous roles include Guest Stars on "The Orville" and "Cursed", and appearances on shows like "SWAT", working opposite Shemar Moore, and "Code Black" working opposite Boris Kodjoe.

Yvonne and her husband, Charles Jones, own the production company, MFB Entertainment.

In this episode, Kurt Koehler shares his top tip on the one thing a successful actor must have and why.

Kurt Koehler has worked as a casting assistant for TV and Film.

Kurt is also an Actor/Writer/Director in Los Angeles.

He has many acting credits, including Big Bang Theory, AGENTS of Shield, Young Sheldon and Girlboss - just to name a few. He also co-created the underground cult classic CHICO'S ANGELS in LA.

Kurt also teaches what he's learned to trained actors! And his students book work!

http://www.kurtkoehler.com

Our guest is Michelle Khare, host of HBO Max "Karma".

Michelle is seriously a bad-ass! And an amazing actress and inspiration for actors and content creators!

With over 2 MILLION subscribers on her YouTube channel, we got to chat with Michelle about her acting journey!

Follow Michelle Khare on all the socials and YouTube!