After I name up actor Keyla Monterroso Mejia, she seems promptly on my display screen, flanked by a mass of cardboard containers.
The 26-year-old rising star, who made splashy appearances in such lately launched movies as “One of Them Days” and “You’re Cordially Invited,” has but to unpack her belongings in her new Inland Empire residence. The seen litter units off a contagious, barely embarrassed giggle, which she muffles along with her palms. Like most of her onscreen characters, the doe-eyed comic emits an harmless pleasure palpable even by a Zoom name.
“Clocked,” she says in sassy Gen-Z vogue.
Her large residence buy is a testomony to the work she has put in through the years, first because the significantly hysterical aspiring actor in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” then as a childlike instructor’s aide in Hulu’s “Abbott Elementary.”
“I’m becoming independent at 27, that’s crazy,” she says, with a nod to her twenty seventh birthday later this month. “Coming from living in a back house with my mom to being able to have my own place and a space this big is really nice! So I’m very grateful.”
In Monterroso Mejia’s protection, she has been too busy with new initiatives of late to take care of the stacks of containers behind her. She’s as a consequence of seem in Mindy Kaling’s Netflix comedy collection “Running Point” (out Feb. 27), will help Seth Rogen in upcoming Apple TV present “The Studio” (March 26) and has joined the Season 4 forged of “Acapulco,” a bilingual comedy collection led by Mexican star Eugenio Derbez.
Monterroso Mejia is also coming down from her most internet-viral second, taken from the critically acclaimed buddy comedy “One of Them Days,” which was directed by Lawrence Lamont and produced by Issa Rae. In it, she performs Kathy, a fast-cash mortgage advisor, reverse Keke Palmer (as Dreux) and SZA (as Alyssa), who’re searching for last-minute concepts to provide you with hire cash.
A clip of their shared cubicle scene — by which mortgage shark Kathy rags on Dreux’s low credit score rating — has captured greater than 9.2 million views on Instagram for the reason that movie’s Jan. 17 launch.
“ I didn’t think people were going to notice or be so receptive,” says Monterroso Mejia. “But for some reason people received it so well and messaged me with really kind things.”
Regardless of showing for less than a few minutes onscreen, she likens the scene’s virality to the feeling of a popcorn kettle, which randomly begins popping underneath strain. Monterroso Mejia’s standout efficiency was not misplaced on Rae, whose manufacturing firm Hoorae and administration firm ColorCreative backed the movie.
Monterroso Mejia’s bodily humor additionally is clear within the Amazon Prime comedy “You’re Cordially Invited,” directed by Nick Stroller. Will Ferrell stars as Jim, who by accident books his daughter Jenni’s wedding ceremony on the identical day that Margot (Reese Witherspoon) pencils in her sister’s large day — a clerical error that causes disarray when the 2 events resolve to share the venue.
Monterroso Mejia performs Heather, who because the maid of honor and de facto wedding ceremony planner to Jenni (performed by Geraldine Viswanathan), neglects to doublecheck the dates as a result of crippling anxiousness she will get from telephone calls. Heather’s misstep results in a one-way angsty screaming match between her and Jim.
“ Her comedic rhythm is just like off in a way that is really compelling as a viewer. I haven’t really run into it before,” Stroller advised De Los on a current telephone name.
Monterroso Mejia’s babyish mannerisms, alongside Ferrell’s authoritative parental posture, make for a few of the movie’s funniest scenes, one in every of which entails her leisurely studying Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” on the altar.
“ It’s not inherently funny to read that book, it’s just a Dr. Seuss book,” added Stroller. “But she really imbued it with this weird character.”
The set expertise felt surreal at instances for Monterroso Mejia, who remembers closing her eyes at one level towards the top of filming and listening to the sounds of Ferrell’s laughter, letting it sink in that she was now not only a viewer of his work however a collaborator and colleague.
“It clicked in my head: ‘You watched him on TV. … What the heck is happening?’” says Monterroso Mejia of working with the comedy king of “Saturday Night Live” and “Elf” fame.
“Mind you, I had already worked with him, but it wasn’t until the end of the movie that I realized that I had worked with an icon,” she provides.
Monterroso Mejia possesses a profound humility about all her work, chalking up her appearing bona fides to easy good luck. (By no means thoughts her pure potential to buoy an in any other case flat scene along with her cartoonishly wide-eyed grin.) To her, there needs to be “something bigger” at play that’s granted her entry to work with stars like Larry David, Quinta Brunson, Seth Rogen and extra — one thing written within the stars.
She doesn’t imply it “in a self-deprecating way,” she says. “There [are] people who are more talented, people who are super beautiful and more traditionally made for what you would see on camera.”
The decision to behave got here to Monterroso Mejia when she was a first-year pupil at Chino Hills Excessive Faculty. She then transferred to the Faculty of Arts and Enterprise in Pomona and completed her schooling by homeschooling within the San Fernando Valley in order that she may attend an appearing program close by.
“I don’t know what the hell possessed me. I was just like, ‘F— it, I want to be an actress,’” she remembers. “And I remember I said it out loud and to the wall and went for it.”
However her friends at college weren’t as supportive of her appearing pursuits. She comes from a standard Mexican and Guatemalan family of barbers and building staff the place her dad and mom have been initially confused about her determination to behave, however she says they later got here round to the concept.
The one one who believed in her talents from the beginning was her youthful brother Nathan. On the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the household lived in her aunt’s again home, he gave up his room so she may use it as for self-tape auditions. Now, Nathan is her designated plus-one at any red-carpet occasion or screening she’s invited to.
“It takes one person to believe in you,” she stated. “I remember anytime auditions didn’t go my way, I would cry and cry and he would tell me it’s a waste of time to cry because [my breakthrough] is going to happen.”
Her brother was proper. Seven years after a protracted haul of failed auditions, Monterroso Mejia would obtain her first mainstream credit score for the long-running Emmy-winning HBO collection “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the place she performs Maria Sofia Estrada, a convincingly horrible aspiring actress who lands a starring function in Larry David’s autobiographical TV present after her father blackmails him.
Taking a web page from the straight-faced awkward Aubrey Plaza playbook, Monterroso Mejia leaned into her weirdness, sexualizing a tongue-twister exercise by the literal sense of wiggling her tongue round her mouth in an unnaturally gross method — paradoxically a match for the present’s tongue-in-cheek comedy.
“I didn’t want to put myself into it. I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m not interesting. I’m weird. This “me” just isn’t ok,’” she stated. “ It wasn’t until I started bringing myself [into the role] that it started to work.”
Credit on the legacy present paved the best way for her lead function in Netflix’s “Freeridge,” a teenage drama-comedy and spinoff collection from cult favourite “On My Block.” In it, she performs Gloria Salazar, the eldest daughter and motherly chief of a good friend group in search of to reverse a curse. Although it was a short one-season stint, she considers the chance a “gift.”
Then unexpectedly got here “Abbott Elementary,” the Emmy-winning comedy created by Brunson. Monterroso Mejia was handpicked for the Season 2 recurring function of Ashley Garcia, an immature aide for the hard-as-nails struggling instructor Melissa Schemmenti (Lisa Ann Walter).
“It’s really stunning when someone makes your jaw drop and you go, ‘Who is this and where are they from?’” stated Brunson on the telephone. She first took discover of Monterroso Mejia’s kooky humor in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
“When you have someone as talented as her, who’s really funny and really capable of being uniquely offbeat, it adds to what you can do for the character,” Brunson added. “To me, it doesn’t matter if someone is really huge. It’s about talent and I just think she’s so talented.”
Gratitude is an overstatement in Monterroso Mejia’s long-winded litany, a sentiment she repeats over and over when recalling her previous and future appearing alternatives.
She has a lot to sit up for: a minor function in Kaling’s basketball comedy “Running Point,” a few woman-led basketball franchise, which premieres Feb. 27 on Netflix, in addition to a recurring function in Rogen’s shaky-cam collection “The Studio,” a few distressed movie govt, which premieres March 26 on Apple TV. She hints that “The Studio” will supply “a different type of comedy” than what she has beforehand excelled at.
Whilst she continues to degree up in her profession, Monterroso Mejia received’t take any of it without any consideration.
“ Life surprises me every time with things that I didn’t even think were possible for myself,” she says. “So I feel like in that sense, I’m going to keep going. I’m ready to receive whatever you want to throw my way.”