JUAN AYALA
BRIDGEPORT ACTOR’S PODCAST AIMS TO CREATE MORE INCLUSIVITY IN FILM INDUSTRY
Growing up, being an actor wasn’t on Juan Ayala’s list of career options. He didn’t see people like him in films and he had no connections to Hollywood. Now, he produces a podcast where he has conversations with other actors about their struggles to make it in the film industry.
“Especially being the child of an immigrant working class family, you don’t even think like, ‘Oh, I can be an actor!’ because so many folks say you need connections,” said Ayala, who was born and raised in Bridgeport.
His interest in music started when he got involved in his church’s choir at around five years old. Then, when he attended Park City Magnet School in Bridgeport, he got to participate in his first theater production — and he fell in love with acting.
“It was the first time that I was singing and acting and dancing all at the same time, so I kind of just fell in love with performing as a character instead of just singing in front of a microphone or with a group of people,” said Ayala.
After graduating from Trumbull High School, Ayala attended Housatonic Community College where he enrolled in the theater program. During his college career, he mainly focused on theater; he performed at the Bijou Theater and Westport Community Theater. In 2016, he made his leap to television, appearing in shows such as NBC’s “Blindspot” and “For Life.”
One of Ayala’s highlights while he was attending Housatonic was getting to learn from mentors such as Geoffrey Sheehan, Housatonic’s Theater Arts coordinator.
“I’m very lucky that I’ve had so many wonderful mentors throughout my career,” said Ayala, who mentioned that he sometimes gets invited back to his college to talk about his career.
It was through another of his mentors that Ayala ventured into journalism. Ed Martin, a producer of the Bridgeport production of “Take me out” where
Ayala was working, invited him to write reviews about Spanishlanguage shows for Media Village.
It was through his work covering television and film events that Ayala got to meet more actors, who he would later invite to his podcast.
“Actors with Issues” started when, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ayala had more free time on his hands and was back in Trumbull after several years in New York City. First starting by interviewing his friends and then cold-calling more actors, Ayala started his podcast that now has more than 100 episodes.
“The name of the show spawned from [the popular saying] ‘we all got problems,’ so let’s talk about them and the obstacles that we’ve overcome,” said Ayala. Some of the actors that Ayala has interviewed include Theo Rossi from “Sons of Anarchy,” Raúl Esparza from Hulu’s “Candy” and Lewis Pullman from “Top Gun: Maverick.”
In his conversations with other movie or television actors, he tackles topics such as mental health, diversity in the industry, the struggles of finding a first agent or choosing an acting school. In June, “Actors with Issues” will host Amanda Chordner from HBO Max series “Sort Of” and an LGBTQ actors roundtable that will include Ian Paget, Broadway actor and TikTok star, Terry Hu from Disney Channel’s “Zombies 3,” among others.
Through his conversations with other actors, Ayala has learned more about the industry too, he said. A recurrent struggle for Ayala has been the lack of diverse representation of the Latino community.
“It’s very frustrating when you don’t get those roles because you don’t fit into the stereotypes,” he said.
A common casting call for Latino actors, he said, is to play a criminal or a person involved with drug cartels, which Ayala doesn’t want to do. He believes the industry only welcomes one type Latino, instead of being open to the wide diversity of the community.
“Some of us have indigenous features, some of us are mixed. It can can a little frustrating as an actor of color when people say you don’t look like your community. It’s like, ‘Well, I am my community’,” said Ayala. As a member of the LGBTQ community, Ayala also hopes that he can represent his identity as a bisexual men, he said.
Regardless of the industry’s hardships, Ayala’s conversations with other actors have motivated him to continue creating a community where people in the industry support each other.
“A lot of times we feel that we’re alone because this industry is very competitive. We feel that we maybe can’t really be friends with actors because that’s out competition, so it can get very lonely for actors out there. So I think it’s important to continue these conversations and to be able to create a little community of actors who are open with talking about these things,” said Ayala.
Juan Ayala, raised in Bridgeport, started his podcast “Actors with Issues” during the pandemic. Left, Juan Ayala with his grandfather Marcelino Guzman in the early 2000s.