Carla Hall has never been simply a “chef.” She’s a TV personality who’s competed on Top Chef, co-hosted The Chew, and judged various Food Network baking competitions. She’s a cookbook author with a baking book, Carla Bakes, out this fall. And she recently collaborated with the team behind Good Stuff Eatery on a fried chicken pop-up in DC called Bumblebirds. But her most recent project may be her most personal yet: an autobiographical one-woman show at the Olney Theatre Center called Please Underestimate Me, running June 3 through July 12. We chatted with Hall about the show, her life mantra, and why you shouldn’t put her in a box.
Why did you want to create a one-woman show?
I did theater as a kid. A lot of people don’t know that about me. Theater was my first love. I was super, super shy. I saw my first play—it was Bubbling Brown Sugar—in 1976. I left the play remembering this one song, and one of my mother’s friends said, ‘Put that girl into theater.’ And so I did theater at the YMCA. It sort of pulled me out of my shyness but also made it okay to be my weird self. So after The Chew ended—I was 55—I was like, ‘I really want to get back to theater, what would that look like?’ I just sort of started plotting.
How did it actually come to fruition?
February of 2023, Leslie Thomas [the showrunner on the Halloween Baking Championship, in which Hall was a judge], Lori Kaye [Thomas’s partner and an executive producer], and I started writing it. I believed build it and they will come. Initially. it was going to be vignettes. [Journalist] Kim Severson wrote an article about me in the New York Times. And I mentioned this one-woman show that I really wanted to do. Olney [Theatre Center] saw the piece and reached out. My sister lives in Olney. So I go to the theater a lot. When they reached out, I’m like, oh, wow.
Have you done any theater as an adult?
I did cameos on Broadway. I was in Newsies, I was in Waitress, Lion King. I was one of the bird ladies. I’ve done improv. I’ve done [The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee].
Can you explain generally what this show is about?
It’s about my life. And the framework is me at a talk show with food—similar to The Chew—and I take you through my life, and it’s all in a flashback, like when I was 12 and I was at theater camp, my little stint in modeling, my resistance to actually wanting to cook at a particular time, my time at Howard [University]. A lot of people assume that if you cook, then you’ve been cooking from a very young age. I absolutely did not want to cook. But I think as you go through this play, you not only understand a little bit about me, you understand my philosophy about life and how I sort of put myself out there to do different things.
So what is your philosophy of life?
I’m always saying: say yes, adventure follows, then growth. That has been my mantra for about 15 years. You say yes, there’s going to be an adventure, whether you think it’s great or not so great, wonderful, stagnating. Whatever experience you had from the point of saying yes to after that thing, you will grow from it. Then it’s rinse and repeat.
Is the show completely autobiographical? How much, if any creative license have you taken with your own story?
A lot of it is pretty much autobiographical. I take creative license to protect some of the people who are in the story. I take a creative license with how we are telling the story. I’m also getting the audience involved in different moments. If you were to think of this story as art, there’s a little bit of mixed media in it.
So there’s audience participation?
Yes, a little improv.
How did you decide what moments to include in the show?
Some of the biggest moments: one, The Chew, two, Top Chef…modeling, being an accountant. Some moments of my life that aren’t so great and happy. That was important for me because a lot of times people think, ‘Oh, you live a charmed life,’ but everybody’s life has ups and downs and we still learn from those moments. Those moments color how we are in the world.
Is it more comedy? Is it drama?
There’s some comedy because it’s just me. I love physical comedy. I love Dick Van Dyke and Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball. There is a little bit of drama and, you know, just storytelling. There is a lot of movement. I’m using the stage and moving around the stage. I’m not standing in the middle of the stage and delivering monologues.
Why’d you call it “Please Underestimate Me?”
Because I absolutely think I’m underestimated in a lot of things that I’ve done. Because I kind of have this ‘oh shucks’ attitude and, like, ‘oh, hey, let’s have fun,’ people underestimate that person. I was underestimated on Top Chef. I think I was underestimated on The Chew. I think I’m underestimated in a lot of places. This story is all about being put in boxes that I got out of. I realized people are putting up boxes around me. Going to a Black university, that’s a box. Black excellence, that’s a box. Being 50 years old or 44 years old and doing a cooking competition, that’s a box.
What do you hope are the takeaways from the audience?
I hope that they walk away saying and questioning who they are, who they can be. And if they are in a box, can they get out of that box? Is it their box that they’re putting themselves in or somebody else putting them in a box?
And then you also have a [pop-up] restaurant and a cookbook that’s coming out. So that’s a lot on your plate.
It’s a lot. All of these things have been building, and now it feels like they just came about. They didn’t just come about. Like the restaurant, I started two years ago talking about this concept and we had tried to put it other places. I believe I’m not given more than I can handle. And this is also when you lean on people and you’re like, what can I take off my plate? I don’t have to do everything. I don’t have to control everything.
What are your aspirations going forward both for this show and your acting or theater career in general?
I would love for it to tour around the country. I have built my brand and fan base from people who are in second-, third-, fourth-tier cities. If this travels, I really want it to be accessible to people, which is why I love community theater.
This ends at the end of July. And I have said to my team, I really want my schedule to be open after my book comes out. I don’t know what is going to come out of this. And I’m okay with that. I am betting on myself that there will be the next adventure, and I don’t need to know what it is now.
What would be your dream role?
I want people to be surprised and to not only just consider me doing something with food specifically. Because a lot of times, if I get a cameo role, it’s a chef. Like in Gossip Girl, I had a cameo as a chef. That’s fine, but I don’t have to be in a role that has to deal with food.
I feel like you’ve been really good in your career about expanding what it means to be a chef, so it makes sense that you would take an expansive view of that next chapter.
Even with the restaurant, one of the things that I wanted to do was to put a piece of my art in the [dining room]. I’m also in visual arts. So culinary is very limiting. And what I am asking other people to do is see creative people as creative and don’t put them in a box.
Don’t underestimate you.
Exactly.
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind DC’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
