 Hi, my name is Veljika and I'm an actress based out of California, and I've always known that I need to know more about the industry and people in the industry because you can enjoy this career so much better if you are able to contribute to conversations like this when you are around your peers. In college I studied theater and there were a lot of people who knew so much about plays, about theater in general, musicals, and playwrights, and I do know a little bit about that. But I want to do more research. You know, it's not like I don't know anything, but I want to know more about casting directors, filmmakers, producers, writers, in TV, film, in theater. So today I wanted to start with Carla Hall or Carla Hall. I honestly don't know how she prefers to be referred to because I know she was born in Mexico, but she has lived in the U.S. for a long time. Her dad is a Dutch descent and he lived in LA all of his life. He's always lived in LA as far as I have been able to see. So I don't know if she prefers the Spanish pronunciation or the English pronunciation, but I'll probably say both. I prefer Bélgica in Spanish because that's my name, that's what I have always been called. So I try my best to call people what they want to be called. So Carla Hall, maybe, or Carla Hall. I found out about her... I'm sure a long time ago, I know I've heard her name before, but when I was doing my own research on Henthified and how to get cast on Henthified, I saw her name again and I was wanting to see more about her and who she works with so that I could potentially, you know, send her an audition through whatever way, whether it was through an agent or through a casting website, which I did end up finding out how to do that. Yeah, so I found out about her and I just wanted to learn more. I was very surprised to see that there is not a Wikipedia for her. She's been in the industry for such a long time. I read some articles and I listened to some podcasts and some interviews with her and I read a really great article that was published recently by the Oscars and I'll link everything in the description of this video so you guys can go check her out. And I'm also going to link her IMDB in the description so you guys can go see more of her films because I know you've seen some of her work. She was one of the casting directors in Coco, of course Henthified and she also worked on Narcos and Narcos Mexico and Nacho Libre, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. I can watch that movie like once a year. She's just done a lot and basically what I was able to gather from all of these things that I saw online is that she is a very important person to know as far as a casting director especially for Latinos and Hispanic people because she specializes or one of the things that she does really well and is well known for is for casting Latinx people, Hispanic people, international people. She has big connections with Spain and Mexico and Latin America so if you are in any other country that speaks Spanish or you are in the US and you are a Latino or Hispanic I would say you need to know who she is because she's going to be casting you and even if you are not Latinx or Hispanic you should still know her because she doesn't only cast Latinos or people of color and from the interviews that I saw of her back in 2013 and even the ones in 2021 she is very adamant about not only casting Latinos for the stereotypes you know like the Mexican gangster or the Mexican chola and in one of the interviews in 2013 she mentioned how a lot of Hollywood would look at Latinx people as brown as gangster where of course we're so diverse I mean the part of Mexico I'm from everybody well everybody in my family and is really tall and light-skinned and a lot of people tend to think of Mexican people in my experience a lot of people assume that Mexicans are short my point in all of this is that Mexico and Latino America is very very diverse I am about half Spanish actually even though I was born in Mexico I am about half Spanish in my DNA because there are so many Spanish people in my part of Mexico where I was born in Guadalajara Jalisco which just gives you an idea you know of of the diversity so you get my point Latinx people Hispanic people we are very diverse one of the things she focused on and still focuses on is making sure that if there is a Latinx person that is very specifically you know from Honduras that they cast somebody from Honduras that has an accent from Honduras if it's a Chicano person okay where what part of Mexico are their parents from where in the US are they living so just casting somebody that is true to the the text that is written not just oh we need a Latino person for this role okay what do you mean by Latino person and one of the reasons why I think she is such a great casting directors not only because she is open to you know casting the right person for the right role but she also knows Spanish so she's really able to audition so many more people so many more countries there's so many countries that speak Spanish and English so it's great to have some a female who has the experience of being in the US has the experience of being in Mexico who speaks both languages to be able to connect with actors from so many places and what I was able to find about her family is that her dad and her uncles are Hollywood producers or were Hollywood producers I wasn't able to find out anything specific about that and in one of the interviews she also mentioned that her great-grandmother was in the film industry so you know she growing up she was always on set here and there and that's why she started to be in the industry and then her entertainment industry is because of her dad and her uncle they invited her to work on a project and she was actually one of the first and only Mexican casting agencies from 2002 2007 she had a casting agency in Mexico and there were you know people casting there because there's a lot of films that filmed in Mexico but there weren't a lot of legit you know established registered casting companies there so she was one of the first and then she felt that she was outgrowing that market the Mexican market because there just wasn't enough work for her and she really enjoyed working with international actors actors from all different countries she does a lot of casting with Spain I watched a few interviews where she did a tour in Spain where she did workshops to help Spanish actors be able to present themselves better when they are sending auditions to Hollywood so this was in around 2013 that she did these and she went over there and told them about hey when you're sending in a reel or when you're sending in a self-tape audition make sure it looks like this and in the US there's there's so many things that are being produced and filmed in the US that it's very very organized so she taught people in Spain how to present themselves better so they had a better chance of being cast in Hollywood films so she is very very much interested in casting people from all over the world to make sure that she's casting the right person for this story that is being shared and then after that she came to Hollywood to the US and she has a casting company still here she is working on so many things one of the things that she's working on that is still in the script stage is Flaming Hot which is about the story of Hot Cheetos which I love Hot Cheetos so that's really fun I'm excited to see what that becomes if you have Netflix and you want to check out her stuff of course Hentte fights season one I definitely recommend that if you're not Latinx or if you are it's a great show Selena the TV series Narcos which is Narcos on Hulu I don't know I've only seen a few episodes of Narcos I'm definitely gonna go and watch that Coco Coco was amazing so beautiful and I just love Coco if you haven't seen it come on get it together Coco was a huge film it was the first all Latinx cast with that budget that was animated so and it won awards and of course Karla Hall was one of the casting directors and like I said at the beginning of the video I am going to link her IMDb in the description so you guys can go and check out her movies if you want to learn more about her I would say watch her movies because that's how you're going to know what she's been working on what she likes to work on it was so great to find someone like her because obviously I am a Latina woman I was born in Mexico just like her and it's nice to see that there are people with that much power because of course she has a lot of power she's a huge casting director it's nice to see people being responsible and being careful with people's identities you know not just giving them the stereotypical roles each time yeah I really really enjoyed reading about her and I hope that I can find more information about her if there's any other casting directors that you think we should know of especially if they are people of color please let me know because I am of course going to continue to do research about casting directors so this is going to be an ongoing thing because this is very important this is a very important part in being an actor being knowledgeable about who you are auditioning you know with so you know their work so you can hold a conversation like I said in my last video but I hope you enjoyed this video thank you so much for watching at the end of every video I feature another channel this is today's feature if you would like to be featured on my next video make sure subscribe like this video and leave me a comment