Hayley Orrantia, a star of The Goldbergs, rises high in the worlds of music and television.

Photograph by TJ Manou

The multitalented 23-year-old  first discovered her love for music during the halcyon days of her youth. From an area called Highland Village, Texas—just outside of Dallas— Orrantia began delving into music even before her 10th birthday arrived. By the time she was a teenager she had begun collaborating with songwriter Jamie Houston, who is known for penning several hits for all three of Disney’s High School Musical films. Orrantia would go on to be featured on several other Disney projects, including recording songs on soundtracks for Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure, Camp Rock 2 and Hannah Montana Forever.

“Music definitely came first,” says Orrantia, who found initial fame as part of the all-girl group Lakoda Rayne in Simon Cowell’s The X Factor and now stars as Erica on the hit ABC sitcom The Goldbergs. “Acting—it’s kind of a long, crazy story—but acting kind of happened to continue in my pursuit of music.”

With fall’s arrival, Orrantia’s days are getting full as the fifth season of The Goldbergs kicked off last month. She took a few rare moments of downtime to offer her thoughts on her careers in music and TV and offered some advice to other aspiring artists.

On her start in music…
I really knew that I enjoyed singing. My parents heard me and said, ‘Well, do you want to take lessons? Is that something you want to pursue?’ and at 9 [years old] I was like, ‘Yeah I do,’ so we found a great teacher in the area—[Linda Septien of] Septien Entertainment Group in Addison, Texas—and she had taught … a lot of different singers who you may have heard of. I think at some point she gave lessons to Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, she taught Ryan Cabrera, Jessica Simpson, so people that are actually from the Dallas area would go to her for music. I started out there and kind of stayed there until, I want to say I was 14, then after that, I just kind of did my own thing.

Having that X Factor…
My mom was the one that really begged me to try out for X Factor because she knew that it was going to be a great opportunity, since it was the first season that it was going to be in the U.S., and I did an online audition tape. I sent it in—I think it was via YouTube that they had you submit—and I guess the producers saw my tape and they asked me to come to audition in front of the judges in Seattle. From there, you saw everything else if you watched the show.

Bringing music to The Goldbergs…
That’s such a crazy story. After X Factor, I just went back into acting as if nothing had happened; I went on an audition and got very lucky to get the role [of Erica Goldberg]. My character was based upon the creator’s oldest brother Eric, but they didn’t have that many storylines since they changed it to a girl, Erica, and so I told them, ‘I know that you’re kind of still developing this character, and if there’s ever a chance that I could sing on the show, whether it’s even me submitting a song on my own just to play in the background, I would love to do that.’ And I guess they tried one episode where I sang in the talent show, and from there it just kind of became a big part of my character.

Learning to balance interests…
It can be really difficult because I really do enjoy music and I really do enjoy acting, and so sometimes it can be difficult to do both, especially because whenever it comes to something creative like that … you kind of have to give it every second that you have in order for it to be successful. … I’ve gotten very lucky that I have a good team around me that helps me keep track of where I’m going and what I need to do, and I’m very involved in the business aspect of my career. I know there are a lot of people—artists—who just like to do the creative and arts side of it, but I think lately I’ve gotten really into the scheduling and the organizing and the planning and ‘What is the brand going to look like?’

Pursuing an entertainment career …
The word ‘no’ is going to happen a lot, but that doesn’t necessarily mean ‘no’ to everything that you’re doing. It really has a lot to do with being something that you want to do and putting in the hard work and time that needs to be put in, but there’s also another part that you can’t control, which is finding the right people around you that support you in what you want to do. And timing has to be perfect.

It’s really, as cheesy as it is, a little bit of a fate thing; all these different things kind of have to align in order for it to happen. So I guess my advice would be: Don’t give up just because it seems difficult in the beginning.

This article originally appeared in Orlando Family Magazine’s October 2017 issue.