Ten-year-old Leah Janvier could not tell anyone when she was hired for Nickelodeon's "Bubble Guppies."
"It was so hard to keep it secret because you just want to go to everybody and be like, 'Guess what? I'm going to be on Nickelodeon playing as a new character!' So when I was actually able to tell everybody, all my friends and everybody, they were so excited and happy for me," she told me.
Leah is the voice of Zooli, one of the fish-tailed preschoolers featured in the animated series, now entering its fifth season.
After surprising her friends with the news of her selection, she got a big surprise, too.
"I didn't really know that it was going to look like me," she said. "I just saw, you know, just a sketch, and then when all of the color came out and everything, I'm like, 'Whoa, that looks like me!'"
And Leah knows how important that is.
"Usually, there aren't many girls with color on shows like that, so then when you see one, everybody's super excited and they think that it's pretty amazing," she said.
After appearing on a show that made over kids' rooms, a producer told her she could have a future in TV. So for the past two years, she's been going on auditions, appearing in commercials and, of course, doing some typical kid stuff.
She lives in Tottenville with her parents and sisters. She does gymnastics, plays quarterback on a football team, and has just started voice lessons.
She even gave me some important career advice.
"Because it's something that you love that's already perfect, and then you just need to keep on doing that," she told me.
She also showed us the happy dance she is going to do when she gets her next big break, which I'm sure she will...very soon.