Family Chat: A Candid Conversation and a Wild Outsider Story with Thalia Romina
In this episode, my bff, Thalia Romina @thethaliaromina and I go off on a few too many tangents (in the best way possible). She shares a wild outsider story and you guys get to know her for the first time.
Summary
In the family chat hosted by Taylor Rae, her best friend, Thalia Romina, an actor, comedian, and voiceover artist from Queens, was the special guest. Thalia’s childhood experiences as the child of immigrants in a predominantly white, upper-middle-class Catholic school were discussed, including incidents of micro-aggressions and cultural misunderstandings. She shared an incident in which she was unjustly implicated in a scandal involving illicit photos. These experiences made her feel alienated, leading her to stop attending her local church and struggle with societal expectations. After shifting to a more diverse high school, she felt more comfortable. Taylor and Thalia discuss how they became friends at NYU.
Transcription
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
Hello. Hello, welcome back. It's me Taylor Ray and this is a family chat of on the outside. Hello, friends. Welcome back. We got another family chat and today, oh, you are in for a treat girl. Because here I have my BFF, the queen of Queens, the love of my life, my star in the sky, my best friend, Talia, she's sitting right next to me, but you know, I'm keeping it cute.
You're not going to hear her voice just yet. Until after I finish her beautiful introduction today, you're going to learn a little bit more about Talia and we're also going to hear a story about a time. She felt like an outsider and what that really means to her. Let's get into it. My gosh, Talia, you're here.
Thalia Romina
I'm so excited to be here. It's like hanging out with my best friend.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
I know obviously. All right.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
So tell the people who are you, what's up everybody?
Thalia Romina
It's your girl, Thalia Romina. I am born and raised in Queens New York. I am an actor and a comedian. I do stand up. So hire me for your, I don't know, events I'm going to be a little bit cleaner for this because you know, I don't want Taylor having to cut everything and be like you can't say that it is explicit.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
It's labeled as explicit.
Thalia Romina
So live your dream of your rated E, not for everyone though. Yeah, so yeah, I live my life. I'm the youngest four Children. I, I spend the majority of my time doing voice over. That's why I pay the bills. But I also do film TV.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
And you hear this lovely voice, they're getting to hear it.
Thalia Romina
That's crazy guys. It's actually very expensive. My rate is so expensive. No, I'm kidding. I met Taylor in college.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
She's my writer, which I always think is like in my mind, I'm like, yeah, we're relatively new friends because I think I'm still 20 all the time.
Thalia Romina
I'm like, wow, my new friends, I'm like, how are we so close?
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
We've only known each other for like two weeks. That's so crazy. But ok, we met when we were 18.
Thalia Romina
Yes, you were 18. I was 17.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
So it's been 12 years going on 13 years. Oh my gosh. I love that for a while. So cute. Insane.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
And in my mind I'm like, I'm 19 now, I've only known, I feel, I feel 14.
Thalia Romina
I still tell people I get carded at movie theaters the last time that happened, a movie theater. I've been car in movie theaters and it happened pretty frequently, but that was also like eight years ago. And I still tell people that I do like that was me last week. Not true. It's because you're a short girly. I'm a short girly.
I look 12. and people love that though. People love a young looking girl. You know, I had someone ask me if, well, they asked me if my boobs are real and then they also asked me as a girl and they asked me if I had Botox. And I was like, no, I did it once but I plan on doing continue to Botox once in August in Argentina.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
Where on your, on your face, on my forehead?
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
What the f*ck you never told me that? Wait really never told me.
Thalia Romina
No, I definitely told you because it was free. So I was like, yeah, fuck it. Whatever. No. Yeah. It's my siblings mom because I have two half siblings. BT dubs.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
I do not recall that at all. I'm shocked and appalled that I did not know that.
Thalia Romina
Yeah, but it was only, it only lasts a couple of months. So it's gone now. But
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
that's my sound of shock. I didn't even know that was coming out of my mouth. Oh my God.
Thalia Romina
Wait, imagine my face was like into a dolphin. I couldn't move my mouth and you were like so weird.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
Is he oh my gosh. OK. Well, good to know. OK. Well, I'm learning about you in this episode? OK. I feel like there's so much more that you could say, but Talia is going to be with us for the next three weeks on the pod, get ready in our family chat. So you will learn more about her. But why don't we hear about a time that you felt like an outsider?
Thalia Romina
Sure. So it's always really interesting because I am a Latina, but I, I do feel very grateful that I've, I've had a lot of privilege in my life. And that's always something that I'm grateful for. I'm not guilty about it. Let's be honest, I'm not guilty. So I always like to kind of, I, I right before this episode when Taylor and to me on her podcast, I was really thinking like, OK, how do I feel?
What can I talk about? There's so much to talk about and so little to say at the same time, like, I just like my minuscule intro. I was like, hi, I'm an actor comedian by. So I, I wanted to, you know, me and her kind of talked about it. She was like, don't tell me yet what you're gonna say. So I'm not sure if I've actually told you this. But I have something that really comes across in my life.
I feel like your teenage years are very, like, usually almost painted in a negative light. You remember the bad things. So, you know, being ostracized, I think, contrary to popular belief, I think being ostracized is helpful and important because life isn't easy. Like life is not easy. So when you're ostracized, that's really when like that pain and suffering some beautiful, usually blooms out of that hot, hot take. So, maybe it's just because I'm a masochist on the low.
Some of you can relate, I'm sure. So, when I was 12, I was turning 12, my family moved, I'm originally from Jamaica Queens. My parents come from very humble means. And then my parents started making more money. So they moved us to a house like kind of living the American dream. My parents are immigrants, came to the United States in the eighties. And they're from the Dominican Republic and Argentina respectively and they came as adults. Yeah, they came as adults.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
My parents came as like little tiny Children, right?
Thalia Romina
So your parents are probably subscribed to more American customs in certain ways because their pivotal years were there. Whereas my parents have heavy accents. My mom came in her mid twenties, my father came at the age of 30. And you know, as we say in Spanish, Joan do cera like kind of like hustling. So when we moved, it was this big American dream for them to move into a house.
You know, it was a huge deal and we moved to a predominantly white neighborhood. Now, I have two older siblings that live in Argentina and my sister who's four years older than me was already in high school. And like the high school was where we grew up, where she went. So she already had her friends, whatever. I moved in middle school. to this Catholic school, I grew up very Catholic.
And to this Catholic school in a predominantly white neighborhood and of an upper middle, like upper middle class kind of neighborhood, which was something that was kind of new to me. And I remember at the moment in my young brain, I didn't realize what I did to try to assimilate as best as possible. I definitely did my best to stand out. It was like, instead of people, usually I feel like sometimes they try to blend in.
I was doing the opposite and almost like I made like a caricature of myself because I was like the one Latina girl in class. The thing is I have a legal Italian last name. So I, even though I didn't look, I looked very ethically ambiguous at the time, people kept asking me if I was Indian. Yeah, I used to get asked like, are you Indian? Are you Pakistani? Are you Middle Eastern? Are you Arab? I used to get that a lot. And this was post 911.
So I think people were very kind of apprehensive. They were like, what is this girl from? But then they would see my Italian last name because immigration in this 19th century to Argentina. So a lot of that was going on. So as a good Catholic girl, I joined the church to be an ultra server which was honestly great. I loved being an ultra server because I got to skip class and like taste the wine and like in a Catholic school.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
Ok. Word.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
So I was like, how are you skipping school to go to church?
Thalia Romina
And they like, take you out and like, they dig you early, like you, you have like special treatment not in like a school way. I mean, like, like a good way in a good way. Yeah. and I, we always used to go to church on Sundays religiously back in Jamaica. So when we moved to White Zone, I started to notice how other my family was like as a whole, my dad was always working.
So my mother was the one that like, she stopped working when I was born and like took care of us. And so she would pick me up from school, drop me off, whatever. And my mom has a very heavy accent, very phenotypic, typical Latin woman. And I started to notice people would treat my mother differently. Now I, I think it was just people just also just didn't really vibe with the kind of person. I was, I didn't fit into that cultural, like in Jamaica, in my classrooms, they were all very diverse and everyone's parents were immigrants. These were like 2nd, 3rd generation, even first, you know, I mean, they were all very assimilated to American culture when I moved to, to Whitestone. So I was like a little bit taken aback by that because I was like, how do people, like, I couldn't relate necessarily that much because these people were very Americanized, like the kids were, the parents were.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
And I always remember the people that treated my family well, but the, you know, the ones that treated my family differently or just like a lot of like just micro aggressions here and there that I didn't really, you know, subscribe to or didn't like or even if you can't like as a kid be like, that specific thing made me feel bad. You just know the vibe, the general feeling is and sometimes when people go, but what did they say?
Thalia Romina
But what did they do? And you're like, no, you just know.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
So I had a friend talking about that in literally every one of these family traps because if, you know, you know, you know, you've had someone say some sketchy thing just like, look at you in a way or like, you know, you know, you know, one 100%.
Thalia Romina
So I so I was gonna get involved in the church or whatever. And I was cool with like, you know, the priest, he would come give us like a con like give us a, so I had like, there was like a Halloween party that the school was throwing to raise money. And I, and there were a bunch of pictures, the priest came to the Halloween party to like, say hi and stuff.
There were a bunch of pictures of the like all of us together and then like the there's a picture of me and the priest like, like not like holding, I think it was Father Jim. I don't know if he's still, I can feel like I could name names in this because I'm pretty sure he's dead. But anyway, so it's like we were like holding each other, not holding each other, but it was like, like arms are around each other, some sort of arm situation that wasn't, we weren't touching per se.
And I, I had a digital camera. So I posted all these pictures to my private digital photo album that was on MS N Messenger. I know I'm dating myself here but MS N Messenger. So Facebook wasn't a thing back then. myspace was, but these pictures were not on myspace. And I told this girl that I was friends with that, I had a bunch of pictures from this party and she told her parents, and her parents called the school and told the priest that I had illicit photos of him.
And so he freaked out, understandably so and he called my parents and was like, there are photos that are erroneously being misinterpreted of me and your daughter and my parents grew up very Catholic. My mom was involved with the church. My father was an altar server. So they freaked out when they were like, why is a father calling her home?
I'm so sorry, father. And he gets on the phone with me and he's like, I was like, there are no photos publicly and he's like there are photos and I was like, no father Jim, there are literally no photos like because it was in a digital like nobody had access to it. But I had told one person, she told her parents, her parents did not like me like at all.
They they said that I cursed too much which fair that's valid. But they were like, they were out to get me like they were literally out to get It's insane. I know. So then I was overwhelmingly embarrassed and I was like, OK, I'll take them down and I like took them down from the digital photo but they weren't even, they weren't even like nobody had access to it.
So that was horrible, right? It made me feel so embarrassed and then someone I this girl would tell her parents everything or something. And I had made a joke with another student about sex. And they told the principal, same girl, like same family told the principal I just figured it out and the principal was like, I need to know if you're having sex with another student and I was like 13 with braces seem like I literally barely know what, yeah, I don't know what the fuck that is.
Like, you know what I'm saying? Like I was kissing boys, I will say that I was kissing boys at 13 but like I was just like, never, I was like, no, it was so humiliating and the principal was so embarrassed that like she had to even ask me, but she was like, this is just protocol. It was so crazy. It was like this woman had it out for me.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
How do I not know?
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
Wow, that is so I know I know my gosh.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
OK. Well, literally hate that for you. Hate that for you. It really, you know what it made me think about very different. But when I was in kindergarten, I had seen some movie with my parents, I think it was a kindergarten cop. Do you know that movie? OK. I OK. So I had seen in kindergarten cop with my parents and in it, there's a line that the little kid says which is just like boys have penises, girls have vaginas.
And I was like telling everyone in my class that I was like five years old and I was like, yo, you're a boy, you have a penis, you're a girl, you have a vagina. I didn't even really know what that meant. But I was like telling everyone and the principal called, my parents had them come to the school and they were like, you taught your daughter. But they made it really weird because I told my parents, yeah, we saw that movie and I told everyone this and my parents were like, oh ok.
But the principal was like, your daughter is talking about genitalia to all the students like made it really sketchy like, girl, what do you mean? I'm not even being sketchy. I'm literally repeating this movie. What that's what made me think about. But wow, I hate that for you.
Thalia Romina
And it was like, it was like consistent. Like that's one moment. But then the mother called me and wanted to talk to me on the phone and like, adults should not speak to Children. No, no. What are you doing? Honestly? It's, it's honestly nuts like, and, and she's been dealt a really shitty hand in her life which like God, you know, I'm not saying she deserved it, but God's timing is right.
So I, you know what I mean? So she's in DG and, and like, and I think, you know, the the daughter, I do blame her also a little bit. But at the end of the day, the adults are the ones that are in the driver's seat. So like, what are you really like? I don't know what she had an obsession over me. It was, it was crazy. It was just like, it was like one thing after the other and I remember going to church and not, I don't think this was correlated.
I think it was just the general outside and I was like, I don't feel comfortable or welcome in this church. And my mom was like, me either. So we stopped going to church. We like, stopped going all together because that was the closest church that we had. Did you ever find a different church? You just never, we just never when sometimes for like special occasions, we would go to Saint Patrick's Cathedral, which I love. And then, or we would go back to that original church in Jamaica. Because that's where we felt most at home. And it was like, it was just, it was horrible that I remember just almost like being really leaning into the whole Cholla Latina kind of thing because I felt like that's where they put me in the box. So I was like, well, I'm going to go stand out in the box that they put me in when there's more, we're not a monolith, there's more nuance to me, you know what I'm saying?
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
But I feel like that's almost like the person I needed to become Richard actually talks about that in one of his episodes.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
How he was like, yeah, I used to, like, become a caricature of being an Asian.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
It, like, just general, you know, what kind of things can I do that will make people laugh and like, he would make fun of other Asian students and just, like, really try and be what they said he was and it was a way to fit in, in a way, you know what I'm saying?
Thalia Romina
I was, but it was like, almost reject. It was very strange. And, and that, that whole experience was horrible. I hated, I hated living there and I couldn't, when I went to high school, I went to high school in the Upper West side and it was, you know, you went to laguardia, laguardia, the fame school. I went there and I, and I definitely that was gone because it was like, so diverse, so interesting and different and it was public school, which is also, it was, you know, kind of vibe.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
So I feel like I have to end our first episode noting that this really, wow, that was like the perfect full circle moment because it really brings me back to when we became best friends, which is when we were at NYU. And you said, oh, I went to the fame school and I was like, oh, this girl sucks. I hate this. I hate this girl. This girl sucks. And you, for anyone that doesn't know t is just like very flexible, like you're very mobile.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
You have like really bendy joints and she sits like real, I'm sitting weird.
Thalia Romina
Shes real bendy sitting just like this.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
Your little, like bendy crisscross where your legs are just like freaking, like made of paper.
Thalia Romina
It's like crisscross, applesauce.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman, Thalia Romina
But on the, yeah, like your legs are just like no hip joints move that way.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
And so you were sitting like that you were wearing Arrow Stall or Apostle depends how you want to say it. OK, sweatpants. And they were always like Capris on me, but they're like full length on you because you're a small girl. And you said that and I was like, oh my God, this girl sucks. I hate how she's sitting and why are these pants long on her? And they're short on me. And I don't like any of it.
Thalia Romina
I will say this though because the reason I was like, I like this girl is because I said something and no one was paying attention. And then Taylor said, wait, no, finish what you were saying. And I felt on the inside when she said I felt that I was like, oh she's cool. I like this girl and I was like, and she was like, ew, anyway, that's how we became friends and best friends.
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
Well, I hope you had as Tali likes to say a ba blast. That's what you always say when something's like good. So I hope you had a Baha blast with T and I listen out for the next one. See you out there. Bye.
