The No-Plan-B Blueprint: Hustle, Craft and Surviving the Industry When Talent Isn’t Enough.

In this episode of Artists Unveiled, we sit down with Dennis White, the actor, director, teacher, writer, and creative force whose career is stitched together by persistence, reinvention, and an unshakable devotion to the craft. From Billboard-charting music to hosting at Fuse, from acting alongside Jodie Foster to coaching the next generation of performers, Dennis is a living blueprint for what it means to create with longevity when the world keeps shifting under your feet.

His story begins long before the cameras, long before the roles. For Dennis, there was never a Plan B, because no one asked him to be an artist. He chose it. He fought for it. And he stayed when most people would have folded.

Across this conversation, Dennis breaks down the truth people don’t like to say out loud: talent might open a door, but consistency, humility, and spiritual grounding keep you in the room. He talks about teaching actors who never researched their teachers, the grind of building something before social media existed, and why the “microwave era” of instant fame is destroying the craft, but also offering new windows if you’re willing to show up again and again.

He opens up about the parts of this industry that are brutal and beautiful:
how life experience shapes performance, how rejection becomes fuel, how you learn to hold spiritual connection in every character, and what it really means to affect someone so deeply that they cry, hate you, or heal because of a role you played.

Dennis’s honesty is piercing, about burnout, perseverance, the loneliness of rising, and why every artist eventually faces the moment where they must decide:
 Do I walk away, or do I walk in anyway?

Because for Dennis White, there was never a backup plan.
Only the work.
Only the calling.

💫 Listen to “Artists Unveiled: Dennis White – The No-Plan-B Blueprint: Hustle, Craft, and Surviving the Industry When Talent Isn’t Enough.”

Now streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Buzzsprout.

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Transcript

Dennis White: You know, this is it. There is no plan Bs for me. And I tell people, nobody asked me to be in the entertainment field. It was not like someone knocked on my door and said, Dennis, we want you in the entertainment field. This is something that I asked to do, I wanted to do. So they do not have to accept me. They do not have to let me in. They do not have to give me anything. It is what I want.

Holiday: Hi, and welcome to Artists Unveiled, a show where we bring on exceptional creators to not just tell their story, but to give you real insights into how they went from striving to thriving. My name is Holiday, and on today’s episode, we are interviewing a phenomenal actor who is known and loved for his signature character roles and impressive work as a director, teacher, actor, and writer too. Introducing the one and only Dennis White. Hey, Dennis. Nice to see you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Dennis White: Thanks for having me.

Holiday: What are you up to these days? What are you working on now?

Dennis White: Well, right now I am co producing an amazing documentary called The Baristas Versus Billionaires. It is about the Starbucks workers getting unionized and fighting to get unionized. And we are pretty much almost done with it. We are premiering at the Buffalo International Film Festival. We are doing a private screening in New York on October 7th and we have some amazing people involved. We have Susan Sarandon narrating, Amari Hardwick, Yo Yo the rapper, Pete Rock is doing music within it. It is just a great, great project spearheaded by Mark Morley.

Holiday: That is amazing. Congratulations on getting to the festival with that.

Dennis White: Thank you so much. So that, and then I have a movie called New Cycle that is coming out in October as well, the end of October. And then I have like three or four projects that are coming out. And then I have a lot of workshops and classes that I am doing right now too, and just writing and creating.

Holiday: So you have had a very multifaceted career. What was the first thing that you did as a performer or an artist or a writer or a director that really made you feel, this is me?

Dennis White: Man, I think it is all. I think it is everything. I think it is from the rapping to the acting to the hosting to the writing. I think it is all. I think my first real gig that I felt, I do not want to say I arrived, but that I got the most notoriety from, was hosting at Fuse Television and building relationships with artists that I still have to this day. That was really the first inception of Fuse and the majority of people knowing me more. My music career was independent. I was on the Billboard charts as Dennis the Menace and it did well, but I think Fuse opened the doors. And then on the film side, The Brave One with Jodie Foster, that project really made the studios listen to me or see me a little more.

Holiday: And coming from the world of music and acting, do you feel like the come from is any different between the two?

Dennis White: I think with music, it is more about the expression of yourself and getting the public and the industry to accept who you are. In acting, it is more about the public and the industry accepting what you can do. So there is a little difference in that, but it is still the same hustle, grind, highs and lows, all that other stuff.

Holiday: Do you feel, especially in the last ten years with new technology and social media, that the approach is different? What advice would you give a mid career artist trying to shift perspective?

Dennis White: I think the bottom line for anything in this entertainment field is consistency. Whatever your genre is, whatever your niche is. You think about these streamers who are making gobs of money and are so popular. It is because they stream three or four times a day at least. They have built that sweat equity and that clientele and that viewership. It is the consistency and pushing through. A lot of times people get discouraged because the door is not opening immediately, and it is not supposed to open immediately. Especially for anything you want of value, there needs to be some type of challenge to make sure you are prepared for it.

When I started, we did not have Instagram or Facebook. I do not even think we had YouTube or real internet. It was street teams posting posters and going to different cities. And that grind was fun. But now with social media you can reach more people with a click of a finger. But the downfall is that more people with less talent are getting viewership.

Holiday: Some clowns out here.

Dennis White: Exactly. And the thing is, it is supposed to be hard. What people do not understand is that this is a craft. Life experience gives you texture, gives you something to come from. It gives you vibration and energy.

Holiday: How do you explain that to someone raised on instant gratification?

Dennis White: I show them the quality of certain work. When I coach actors, and I have been coaching about 15 years now, I work with celebrity actors, up and coming actors, brand new actors. And a lot of times I will meet people who say they want to act but they do not feel like they need to take classes. And I show them the difference in quality. Everything now is microwave fast. It is quantity, not quality. But I still feel that quality rises to the top. The cream rises to the top. Eventually. Some fall through the cracks, but the majority rises.

Holiday: So on the scales of life of entertainment justice, where do you think the hustle and craft are? Are they equally balanced or how does that work?

Dennis White: You know, no. Unfortunately, I think the hustle is seventy five to eighty percent and the talent is about twenty percent. There are some incredible basketball players at West Fourth Street who can outplay everybody in the NBA, but their hustle is not the same and the know how and the knowledge. But I feel that the talent is cool, but if you do not have the hustle to get it out there and believe in it and push it, its potential is just that, just potential.

Holiday: What should a young artist think to themselves when they are having a low spell? How do they keep themselves motivated? Or do you think that is something intuitive?

Dennis White: Go to the strip club. I am just playing. No, honestly, I feel like you have to understand that it is not always going to be sunshine. And that is no matter what career field you are in. If you work at McDonald’s, you are going to burn your finger on the grease for the fries on Wednesday. You are going to have ups and downs. You are going to have trials and tribulations. So you have to push through it. It is persistence, perseverance. You have to persevere through it. And you have to pray. There has to be an extra spiritual connection to help you mentally and physically to persevere through the trials and tribulations because it is going to be tough. And you are going to have situations where you hear no. And I tell actors and artists, this entertainment field is personal. It is impersonal. You are too short, too tall, too pretty, too ugly, too fat, too skinny. And just like life, it does not matter.

Holiday: Yeah, it is just life.

Dennis White: Actually, I think life is tougher. And I think on a hard day you have to remember that this is a game. And you can enjoy it, even with the ups and the downs. And life is tougher if you do not do what you want to do. Life is going to be happy and sad and tough anyway. So go for what you want. Man, that is the worst thing in the world, to die and not do what you love to do or even attempt to do it. Because ultimately you always end up with yourself. Whatever you have done and whatever you have not done. You are going to walk out the door, you are going to have one pair of shoes, you are going to put your head down on a pillow. So you have to be satisfied with yourself.

Holiday: Definitely.

Dennis White: That is the whole thing. A lot of times when it comes to acting, the thing that people do not understand, I do not think they really get it, is that what we are doing is crazy. It is not normal. We are reenacting someone’s thought. Someone was sitting in a bed like, you know what, I think it would be a great movie about a dude who can bend and move bullets. And he has a guy named Morpheus. Or creating a story about a cop from Detroit who moves to LA and solves a crime.

Holiday: Look at the ripple effects of those things though.

Dennis White: Yeah. It is just someone’s thought process and then they create, they have a vision of the actor, someone comes in, and all of this is in the brain. So everybody’s career is different. You are doing something that no one else has ever done. And you have to understand that you are going to have to break boundaries through that. My career is different than anyone else’s career. And vice versa. I can compare, but I can also contrast. The things I base it on, how I grew up, where I grew up, things I encountered, things I had the luxury of and things I did not have the luxury of, that is the makeup of how I pursued this career.

Holiday: Yeah. I mean, entertainment ultimately came out of shamanism. Earlier we were tribal people. And there would be one person who was the shaman connected to the spiritual realm. And everyone would come around and watch that person. And that is ultimately still what we are doing.

Dennis White: Absolutely. And that is why the spiritual aspect of it is so powerful. That is why when certain actors perform, you gravitate toward them. You are connected to them because their gift is spiritual. Joaquin Phoenix, I do not know what religion he is or if he has one, but his performances are spiritual. You are connected with him. You feel every angst, every smile, every cry. You feel it. And that separates great actors from those who are just good or serviceable.

Holiday: Is there anything you would advise a young actor right now to do or not do? Do you see people being misled or misunderstanding the process?

Dennis White: I feel like every actor, if that is what you want to do, you need to take classes. You need to study. And study meaning not just take a class because. But really study. I have people who take my workshops or classes in a city, like I have one coming up in Memphis next month. They paid their money, took the class, but they never researched me. I am like, you did not Google me. You did not go to my IMDb and check me out. So there are a lot of people teaching classes because there is no regulation. And actors get frustrated because they are not really learning enough to be a working actor. So I feel like take classes, but do your research on the teacher. You cannot teach me to do something you cannot do.

Holiday: I think you are an exception though, because you actually do these things, so people are fortunate.

Dennis White: Yeah, it is a big difference. In my career, I have done every facet of acting. I have done background work. I have done stand in work. I have done stunt work. I was 50 Cent’s stunt double for Righteous Kill. I have done PA work. I have directed. I have produced. I have written scripts. I have been a day player, a series regular. I have done it all, good and bad. And those life experiences are one of the best things for actors. You should collect experiences so you can give them to the audience. One of the best things for me is when someone comes to me, and not just recognizes me, but tells me a project made them feel something. That means I did my job.

Holiday: Yeah. My acting teacher always told us to watch everyone and become them. Life experience is the only real teacher.

Dennis White: And it does not always have to be firsthand. When I played D Rock in Notorious, my character was in prison. I have never been to prison and I do not want to go. I did not commit a crime so I could understand the character. But I had a friend who was locked up and I visited him. I researched, observed. I always tell my actors, if I have to smoke crack to play a crackhead, I am not an actor. I am a crackhead.

Holiday: That is a good one.

Dennis White: And that is the downfall of Heath Ledger.

Holiday: What has your experience been producing and directing? How does being in one part of the industry lead to another?

Dennis White: For me, I was being inundated by DPs and cameramen. They kept telling me I needed to direct. I was afraid, because it was uncharted territory. But I pushed myself. Directing is challenging, amazing, hard, horrible, beautiful. As an actor, you come in, do your work, leave. As a director, it is like raising a baby. You get it from the inception. And you are the conduit between the writer and the audience. If the writer’s vision is convoluted because of bad acting or bad directing, that is your fault. Benny Boom told me the first thing to learn is lenses. That helped a lot. I have studied and taken classes. I feel like I am a pretty good director.

Holiday: Anything you want to shine a light on?

Dennis White: I have a show on Tubi called Clubhouse Cinema where we show short films with sketch comedy around them. I just had a movie come out called Courting Streets. Another film, On Everything I Love. New Cycle is coming out, a great project about a news station taken over by terrorists. The dialogue is powerful. That is out at the end of October. More TV shows and movies coming this year. The show I am on, Code and Wendy, is going into season three.

Holiday: You are always busy.

Dennis White: Bills come every month. They are busy sending them. I have to keep up. And I love what I do. I love acting, filming, creating, coaching. This is it. No plan Bs. Nobody asked me to be in the entertainment field. This is something I chose, so I have to be gracious, appreciative, and persistent.

Holiday: Where can people study with you?

Dennis White: My classes are virtual. At likeyouknow dot org. I have students I have never met in person. I travel a lot. Miami, DC, Baltimore, Memphis, New York, North Carolina. Follow me on social media at Dennis L A White. Only fans. Only toes. I got some corns for you. Buttered corn on a big toe. I am accessible. I am really about this industry.

Holiday: Do you do any live performance or intend to?

Dennis White: Yes. I want to get back into it. Maybe standup comedy. I used to do it. I love comedy. I am around comedians all the time. I might step back into that realm. Plays too. Live performance gives you that instant reaction. In film you wait a year. Onstage you know immediately if you have them or lose them.

Holiday: What does that mean to you?

Dennis White: It sharpens you. I do not really watch my work because I am too critical. But live feedback encourages you. You can adjust in real time. And the fear means you care. I had a meeting at a magnet school and I am going to teach the kids. Give them knowledge.

Holiday: I hope we can chat again. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Dennis White: Thank you for having me. I enjoyed this conversation. Anytime.

Holiday: Thank you so much for coming. I hope to see you soon. Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Artists Unveiled. Check us out on Instagram at dimi dot app dot og and at godimi dot com.