The One About Being Cringe, Giving Back and Creative Blocks with Jess Val Ortiz

The Papaya Podcast

Mental Health, Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this engaging conversation, Sarah interviews Jess Val Ortiz, a social media influencer and theater enthusiast. They discuss Jess's journey from theater to social media stardom, the impact of TikTok, and the evolving perception of theater in the digital age. Jess shares insights on balancing content creation with personal life, the importance of theater in developing creativity and collaboration, and her experiences in both social media and theater. The discussion also touches on the challenges and rewards of being a content creator and the role of social media in expanding traditional arts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi friends and welcome to the papaya podcast. I'm your hostess, Try and Hermostis, Sarah Nicole,
0:10.2	and each week I'm going to be dishing out some sweetness mixed in with some seeds of wisdom
0:15.6	or something like that. So get ready to get inspired, get candid, get real, because we are all in this digital
0:23.3	space together. What a cool opportunity we have today to sit down with somebody who truly
0:31.4	is dominating the online space in such a cool way with such cool content. We're talking about Jess Val Ortiz, and she has, when you hear these numbers, this is wild.
0:43.4	TikTok, 10.7 million followers, Instagram, a million followers, YouTube, a million subscribers.
0:48.3	And she has some really incredible stuff that she's done by bringing Broadway to the digital age.
0:57.6	We're so excited to get into this conversation. I think it's going to be so fun as somebody who
1:05.1	is such a fan of theater. I love connecting with other people who care about that type of art
1:10.4	and bringing it into a new digital age. So please welcome. Jess Valotis. All right, Jess, I am new to your work, but like not new. You're one of those people that I feel is all over the internet and your videos pop up all the time. But I'm excited to like get to know you and get to know
1:29.0	this weird little crossover corner of the internet that you've really built and developed.
1:34.8	So let's maybe start there. I'd love to know your origin story on how you got started.
1:43.0	TikTok's your big, your big one. Obviously, you're big on Instagram and
1:46.3	YouTube as well. But tell me the, tell me the lore. How did this all happen? Yeah, for sure.
1:51.9	So I've done theater my entire life. I started at the age of five. I went to school for
1:58.3	musical theater. I went to Penn State University. Got my
2:01.4	bachelor's in fine arts in musical theater. And it was like the greatest upbringing. I
2:08.9	absolutely love theater. I still love theater. And I'm still auditioning for things in the city.
2:14.7	And it's just, it just means everything to me. So I was graduating
2:19.2	college in 2020, which was when the pandemic happened. So all the theaters got shut down and I mean,
2:26.7	the whole world basically got shut down and it was, it was really tough for not just me,
2:31.1	for a lot of actors, for everyone, no matter what field, obviously, that you're,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Papaya Podcast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Papaya Podcast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.