Ep. 35 Making TV with Deepti Menon

always striving to create, grow, and lead with kindness

Jessica Altchiler

and

Deepti Menon

Jun 24, 2025

Deepti Menon is an actress, animator, and filmmaker whose work spans music videos, commercials with companies including Nike, Facebook and Converse, and TV roles on Law & Order (NBC), The Equalizer (CBS), and I Think You Should Leave (Netflix).

In today’s episode, Deepti shares her honest insight into the entertainment industry as a performer and creator and discusses:

How she booked her television roles (and her thoughts on having an agent)
Realizing her career in animation satisfied her pull towards acting and directing
The pros and cons of self-taping, and what shifted when she went to in person auditions
Being treated extremely differently on set when she was a PA versus when she was talent
Creating a web series with almost no budget, and hoping that project shows others what she’d be capable of with more money, support and resources
Her dreams of being a showrunner (which is absolutely inevitable for this wonderful artist)
Finding, and using, her voice on set and behind the scenes

via https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10416761/mediaviewer/rm373378561/

💝 Inside the Episode

1. Making a web series:

2. Being an actor versus PA on set:

3. We will always strive for more:

(Transcript of attached video)

Jess:

It makes me think about how wherever you are in your career, you're always going to be striving. And so for you, you're at this point that so many actors would envy and kill to be at, which is you have all these credits under your belt. You've been working on your own projects and you're even going in for these series, regular positions that you can be disappointed about, right?

Deepti:

Yes. Totally.

Jess:

And that's not to say you shouldn't be just because other people would love to be there. But some of those people would just absolutely be over the moon about even getting seen for a co-star role. And then you have the people who are already working regularly who then are like, wait, but I still want to take it to the next level because I want to not have to ever worry about money or jobs ever again.

Deepti:

Absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Jess:

And so it's just no matter where you are, you're always going to be where you once wanted to be, and you were always going to be striving. So it really is a matter of, how can I hold on to where I am and what I have right now and be grounded in it and content with it to an extent while still having a healthy relationship with the goal setting and the dreaming and the striving and the working… because I think a lot of us don't have that healthy of a relationship with that part of it, where it's like, well, what I have now is not good enough because I want the next thing, but that's going to be forever and probably every aspect of our lives, not just our careers. So to me, that's personally what I've been working on with myself and what I try to kind of plant the seeds for other people with.

Deepti:

Yeah, definitely. That's so true because I remember I have a friend who was series regular on a show for like eight seasons and I was like, I would kill, kill for that. I can't believe you're complaining even just like the financial stability of that. you know, being able to have hobbies, you know, like you, because for me everything right now feels like I somehow have to make money off of it to survive.

Jess:

100%.

Thank you for being here and please enjoy this week’s episode of The Story Project!