Exclusive: Glambergirlblog Speaks With Actress Santana Dempsey

Photo: IMDb

Santana Dempsey is an up and coming actress with a drive and personal journey that you can’t help but to root for her to win!

You can spot Santana on shows like  HBO’s hit drama The Newsroom and Direct T.V’s new drama Kingdom featuring Nick Jonas.

I had the pleasure of getting to know  Santana Dempsey during an exclusive interview where we discussed how she started in her career, upcoming project, being a mixed race advocate and more!

Check out some excerpts from our interview below:

Santana Dempsey on starting a career in showbiz:

“You know the acting bug really came in college…that’s when I really started to solidify that I wanted to be an actress. So my parents, they use to actually take me, they use to do community theater, one musical…a year and instead of getting baby sitters they would take us with them, to like watch them rehearse…I kind of got the bug a little bit then but I didn’t think it was practical, you know what I mean, so I went to college..majored in Journalism and then all of sudden I realized three months I didn’t want to tell the news, I wanted to be the news. So I changed my major to Theater …and right after college I moved to New York City to pursue officially and I was acting there and then a couple of years ago decided let me re transition, I really love TV and film and I feel like my look would be great there so I moved by myself to LA and here I am.”

Santana Dempsey on upcoming Lifetime film: 

“The upcoming project is called “Shaker Pointe” and that’s like my biggest, like I can’t wait for people to see, I’m so excited, that’s my biggest project. It was going to be I think just a regular movie that was going to be released but then Lifetime picked it up which I’m happy about because I feel more people across the nation can actually see it instead of going to the movies. But I’ve work with huge African-American names: Dawnn Lewis, who I’ve been watching forever, Malcolm Jamal Warner, Cosby Show, Corbin Bleu, Shanica Knowles, Lil Romeo, Tamala Jones, amazing, amazing actors that I was in the same, not just in the same room with but like at the same level as them and I haven’t had that yet and that was just again, another game changer for me…knowing that like it does just take time. Once you get one little thing people will start recognizing you. And it’s a great, great, great, great, great movie. It’s going to be so good. It’s a love story kind of murder mystery…I play this character called Harlow Gillman and she’s a nerd, like this 17/18-year-old nerdist, which means she’s a cool nerd not like a dorky nerd, no I’m serious she like loves Comic Con and stuff like that but she’s nerdy and I wear like these crazy  bifocals glasses, I mean I look, I wear one outfit I have cats all over it, cats and nachos so it was a little, it was interesting just playing one, so young and then two, playing this nerd who’s bit of a comedic relief in this drama which is really fun to do and it kind of breaks things up and the cast and crew were wonderful to work with and I learned so much from them.”

Santana Dempsey on being mixed race and adopted: 

“Well two things that really make you better and that I’ve had challenges with have been being adopted and a transracial adoption, which means your parents are of a different race or not of all the same race as the children they adopt and also being mixed race. And I think for me why I chose to show…is because I was bullied and beat up in middle school and high school for being mixed and having my parents be white and not knowing, not having basically an ethic anything in my life besides my sister and I, we were both adopted together biologically, you know it’s kind of that whole like environment, I felt white all the time and my mom is this 5’10”, blonde hair, green-eyed woman, I thought she was beautiful and I’m this 5’2”, crazy curly hair brown girl and I didn’t see people that looked like me, especially on TV I didn’t and in my community, so why would I want to look like me, no one thought that was beautiful, they think my mom is . So I wanted to look like my mom and that’s what I’ve conditioned, my parents again didn’t condition me like that, it was a coming of age, trying to find yourself but I think for me it just stood out so much that I just started to hate being me and it wasn’t until I kind of like studied abroad in Argentina and when I moved to New York and I saw there were just so many more people and so many more mixes and I found people that finally looked like me and I thought they were beautiful, I was like oh maybe I’m beautiful too.”

Listen to my full interview with actress Santana Dempsey below and share your thoughts in the comments. To catch up on all the things Santana Dempsey is up to be sure to follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @SantanaDempsey.

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