Keyla Monterroso Mejia Wants to Do More Than Make You Laugh
The actress has always thought of herself as a Hollywood outsider. But with a handful of big-deal projects that debut this year, she’s realizing the joke may be on her.
Keyla Monterroso Mejia whispers when she says her co-stars’ names: Larry David. Katt Williams. Reese Witherspoon. Seth Rogen. When she describes sharing the screen with these comedy legends, the 27-year-old actress can’t help but lower her voice, partly out of lingering shock, but also out of continued deference.
“All of these things are like, What is my life? What’s going on?” Monterroso Mejia tells me over Zoom on a January afternoon, referencing her rapid rise to comedic fame. She feels so removed from the radius of Hollywood’s sparkle. In some ways, quite literally. For our interview, Monterroso Mejia—wearing a nondescript sweatshirt; her hair in a bun—appears on screen from her home deep in the Inland Empire, which for the California neophyte is “with traffic, nearly three-and-a-half-hours from L.A.,” Monterroso Mejia says. There’s always traffic.
I’m an L.A. local myself, and we trade SoCal native notes on cities like Irvine, Riverside, Pomona, West Covina. The actress lights up when I recognize the name of her hometown (IMDb inaccurately lists the wrong city). “I never meet people who really know what I’m talking about when I mention these areas,” she says.
We quickly slip into a common shorthand, shared between Cali girls who watch way too much TV. She’s currently in her rom-com era after bingeing Nobody Wants This, and we happily trade anime (her) and Korean variety show (me) recommendations. Monterroso Mejia speaks with her entire body, leaning into the frame when she gets excited, putting a hand on her chest when she reveals something personal. Several times she catches herself, rolling her eyes with an “ugh” when she’s about to use clichéd, pretentious language about her “journey.” Speaking to her feels like chatting with a friend who also just happens to have Quinta Brunson in her Instagram comments.
Monterroso Mejia is a unique case study of a Hollywood outsider turned in-demand actress. She’s lived in Southern California her whole life, but she grew up outside of the industry bubble, which can make even L.A. natives feel like they’re just tourists. She isn’t a former child actress finding superstardom in adulthood, nor a Harvard-Westlake grad fighting nepo-baby allegations.
Still, ever since she debuted on Curb Your Enthusiasm as the cringe-y actress Maria Sofia Estrada, Monterroso Mejia has become everyone’s favorite comedy star. And with four new projects releasing in the first half of 2025, there’s no sign of that changing—or of the fame changing Monterroso Mejia.
As her puppy Milo chews on cardboard moving boxes behind her, the actress explains that she recently faced a common conundrum in the California housing market: move farther out from the city for cheaper home prices or pay more—she makes a choking gesture around her neck at the thought of the financial crunch—to stay closer to her parents on the outskirts of L.A. County, where she grew up. She chose the former. Though the commute to work is still brutal, she admits that the distance helps ground her, keeps her from constantly thinking about her job. “I hang out with my brother, and it puts me back into reality,” she says. “If I didn’t get this job, or if I don’t look this way, it’s not important. What’s happening out here is important.”
The next few months for Monterroso Mejia will continue to be a parade of promo tours and red carpets. She’s already kicked off the year with not one, but two feature films. In her standout role in the Issa Rae-produced One of Them Days, she plays a payday lender who mocks leads Keke Palmer and SZA’s credit scores. For the Prime Video rom-com You’re Cordially Invited, she’s Heather, a wedding planner chosen for her tenure of organizing sorority parties, facing off against father of the bride Will Ferrell.
“I don’t want to call him Will,” she says while recalling being starstruck at her first table read for the film. “I have to call him Will Ferrell. We’re not on a first-name basis. It has to be Mr. Will Ferrell.”
Back on the small screen, her supporting role in Mindy Kaling’s new Netflix comedy Running Point (which premiered in February) let her show off a more measured performance as an ambitious lawyer representing her cousin against a basketball-owning dynasty. In late March, on Apple TV+’s new series The Studio, she’ll play the harried assistant to Seth Rogen’s head of a major Hollywood studio.
While she may feel out of her league, acting was always the dream, even if it felt out of reach. Monterroso Mejia attended a Pomona performing arts high school before leaving early (she eventually graduated via homeschooling) to enter a showbiz gauntlet that she knew “absolutely nothing” about. “There wasn’t a single person that I could go to to ask for some type of information,” she says.
As a hoping-to-make-it-actress, she spent years commuting to L.A. for acting classes and auditions. She booked a few indie films and small theater gigs; all drama-focused roles. It took director Gabriela Garcia Medina, who cast Monterroso Mejia in her first lead role in the short The 90 Day Plan, to tell her, “‘You’re funny. You have a comedy thing going, you should run with this,’” the actress recalls. “And she was right, because then I started getting hired for comedy and now I’m having such a good time.”
Within the span of one week in late 2020, Monterroso Mejia landed two major roles. Most notably, her television breakout on season 11 of HBO’s long-standing hit Curb. On the improv-heavy show, Monterroso Mejia crafted Maria Sofia as the ultimate untalented actress who only got her role through blackmail; a character known for the perfectly awkward way she delivers her lines. It was on Curb that Quinta Brunson first saw Monterroso Mejia and offered her a recurring role on Abbott Elementary’s second season.
Success hasn’t changed Monterroso Mejia’s ethos of approaching her time on set as a student. “It was like a masterclass every day,” she says of filming The Studio, which features a revolving door of A-listers (Catherine O’Hara, Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barinholtz). “Being on set and seeing them work in real time is a huge tool. I’ll see them try a cadence change or physicality in a scene, and then start tweaking and tweaking until it hits. It’s like, Oh my God, I just watched a fucking genius artist workshop a choice. That’s priceless.”
With so many roles under her belt, a throughline has emerged: Monterroso Mejia tends to play workers—assistant, aide, planner, administrator. Most of these women are usually a thorn in another character’s side. The comedy comes from not being well-versed in social cues; not doing their jobs correctly even when they think they’re killing it. Monterroso Mejia has become a master at flipping that switch, transforming her attitude into that nobody can tell me nothing air needed to pull off her characters. As she describes the mindset change, she speaks in gestures, presenting her Maria Sofia side. The actress wishes she could channel that fake it till you make it style more in real life, but that’s a work in progress.
“I think because I’m more quiet and maybe a little bit more shy in my real life, that when I get on set, embarrassment doesn’t exist,” she says. “That energy in my characters shifts into confidence. In that one hour, I just tell myself, Fuck it. Just go for it, bitch. Separate from yourself, your insecurities, the shyness, and just go for it. Because I’m not going to lie, maybe right up until they say action, I feel very scared and I’m nervous.”
Monterroso Mejia’s characters also all dance a fine line of likability. They’re all annoying to some degree, but never unbearably so. In addition to being incredibly entertaining, it’s impossible not to root for them, because at their core they want to do a good job at whatever they’re attempting. When asked about the earnestness of these characters, the actress admits that the trait may be something that seeps in from how she is in real life—the TV fan turned TV star who can’t fully believe how far she’s come.
“As an artist—ew!” she says, laughing at how pretentious she sounds. “As an actress, I do try to have my characters not be one-dimensional… I try to make it come across that my characters, while being very bad at their job, do try. It almost always falls short and is not enough, but it’s never not trying.”
Something that feels plucked from Monterroso Mejia’s own life. She’s never not trying. The disbelief that she’s the star is not a coy act, but the very heart of her hustle. She leans in conspiratorially and admits she’s open to going back to drama roles, “’cause whatever gets the job, girl. Whatever gets the job.” Later, she adds, “I really hope to be in this business for a really long time.”
But the future is a tricky concept for Black and brown girls with imposter syndrome. “Everything that transpired has been more than I thought was possible for myself,” she says. “Sometimes I’m like, Yes, I’m so excited. Bring it on. And then other times I’m like, Dang, I don’t want to be too greedy. I’ve already done so much.” Maybe one day she’ll get an Oscar. Or eventually be able to afford that house in the Hollywood Hills—right next to Mr. Will Ferrell.
Photographer Shelby Goldstein | Stylist Lauren Jeworski | Hair Stylist Josué Perez | Makeup Artist Camille Thompson | Location Four Seasons Hotel New York
This story appears in our 2025 Craftsmanship Issue. Subscribe here.
