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Becca Begnaud, actor, musician, creative, and traiteur joined Discover Lafayette alongside John Paul (JP) Summers, Abbeville-based director and cinematographer, to discuss their collaboration on the 2025 Doritos Crash Commercial, which ranked in the top 25 out of 2000 entries. Together, they share their stories of creativity, healing, and cultural preservation. It is a story about synchronicity in life, healing, and maintaining a sense of humor.
Becca Begnaud has dedicated her life to preserving and practicing Cajun healing traditions. Growing up in Scott, LA, Becca had an idyllic life, close with her extended family. Her grandparents had a farm and every weekend, her family would go to the country, ride horses, and her grandma would cook dinner. “My house faced the side of the church and the back of the house faced the school. You could walk to the grocery store and post office, you could walk everywhere. When you talk about maintaining a culture, you have to look at what community historically looked like.” She grew up speaking English and French.
She learned the value of healing from her grandfather who was a traiteur.” “We didn’t even think of it as healing. Because if you had warts, or a headache or a sprained ankle, you went to see a particular traiteur. You could be rich, you could be poor, black, white or native. None of that mattered. If someone had given you the prayer, you did that.”’
Becca says, “Every culture has within it a community of people who do healing work. So when we got together here in Acadiana with the Native Americans and the African Americans, and then us, the French Europeans, this method of healing developed in our region. It is basically prayer.”
As a backdrop, Becca was diagnosed in 1989 with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. One of the nuns at the hospital, Sister Hilda Mallet, told her she should look into healing work. “I thought, are you serious? Well, my grandpa was a traiteur. Maybe I should look into this. I studied Rieki, healing work, awakenings, and something called Trauma First Aid. There are lots of methods of healing out there. I did hospice work for 30 years, and worked with Lourdes at Camp Bluebird, a camp for adults with cancer. I have the perspective of a person who was ill. I have the perspective of a person who worked with a medical team, all as a volunteer.” Today, Becca continues her healing practice at her office at 600 St. Landry Street in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Becca embraced her role as a healer, never doing it as a way to earn a living, just as a volunteer. “When you have a catastrophic illness, you don’t have extra money to drop on treatments of any kind. You hope to pay the deductible of 20%. So, when I studied with nurses, we were talking about Source. If you are teaching in a professional educational setting, you can’t talk about what you call God. There may be Jewish or Native American people, Christian or Hindu. So, we talked about Source. We were all saying the same thing but in a different way.”
After many synchronistic experiences, Becca had a professor at the university, Frans Amelinckx, give her the prayer of a traiteur, Mr. Nestor Guidry. It said, “”Je suis parent and je suis parenté, ” which means we are related, we are related. You repeat it three times. And it is beautiful. Native Americans always speak of all our relations. We’re all one. We are. So that was a light bulb moment for me.”
When asked if you had to believe for a traiteur’s prayer to work, Becca said, “Traiteurs treat cows, pigs, horses and other animals that need healing. What does a cow or a pig know about beliefs or church? Then I thought if my grandfather could do this healing work, why not me?”
A musician to this day, Becca came up in a family of drummers and she played the drums. “When you play rhythm and you don’t really think, then who you are comes out. Music by itself is healing.”
JP Summers, a director and cinematographer from Abbeville, Louisiana, has been creating impactful films with local talent. JP first encountered Becca during the filming of 17 Year Locust and found her energy transformative. Her first acting collaboration dates back to 2018, when Hunter Burke asked Begnaud to serve as a dialect coach for “Lost Bayou.” Becca’s recent film credits include Intention. Another film Becca and JP collaberated on, Treatment, is in post-production. In it, Becca interviews Matt Allen, Ray Brasseur and Dr. Sarah Brabant, who taught Death and Dying. Her therapist, Louis Deshotel, was also interviewed ten days before his passing. Becca says, “My relationship with JP and the projects we worked on all had something to do with death and dying. It has brought us to this shared depth of that part of life.”
JP and Becca worked on a commercial for the Doritos Crash competition, which challenges filmmakers worldwide to create Super Bowl-worthy ads. Initially, JP envisioned a young man spreading his father’s ashes, but inspiration struck him to cast Becca as the lead. The result, filmed at Fontainebleau State Park in Mandeville, was a heartfelt and humorous commercial where Becca’s character is eating Doritos while looking at this picture of her and a man at a younger age. She then looks over and there is an urn on the passenger seat. She grabs it, goes to the beach to spread the ashes, and the wind blows it all over her. The she’s back in the car, goes to get another Dorito, but there are no more in the bag. She then looks at her fingers and there are ashes mixed in with the Dorito dust. She enjoys it! All filmed with no words spoken. The tagline? “You have to be bold.” A famous Doritos tagline.
Becca and JP describe the experience as deeply moving. JP recalls, “It felt like a healing ceremony. The clouds literally parted as we began filming.” He further said, “That end of life question and dealing with death and dying is Becca’s message. And God had a plan to get that message in this weird, unique, sort of synchronous way. I think it is fun that a Doritos commercial can carry that whole package inside of such a short, 30-second message.”
Becca reflects on the balance between laughter and loss: “As a healer, you know not everyone will get well. Humor helps us embrace all parts of life, even the tough ones.”
JP and Becca’s partnership showcases the unique talent pool in Acadiana. From JP’s work with local filmmakers like Logan LeBlanc to Becca’s authentic performances, their projects highlight the beauty and resilience of Cajun culture.
“Becca’s energy brings something singular and unique to every project. She transforms humor into connection.”
Discover Lafayette extends gratitude to Becca and JP for sharing their inspiring journeys and to the community of Acadiana for nurturing such extraordinary talent. For more on JP’s work, visit Honest Art, and to connect with Becca, find her on Facebook or visit her office in Lafayette.
Watch the Doritos Crash Commercial
Experience the magic of Becca Begnaud and JP Summers in their Doritos Crash Commercial – a testament to bold creativity and heartfelt storytelling.
