Carla Hall, TV chef and restaurateur, will perform a one-woman show about her wild and precious life. 'Please Underestimate Me' makes its world premiere in June. Photo by Marvin Joseph

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Change, whether internal or external, is one of the gifts of a long life.

So says Carla Hall, who in her six decades has been an accountant, runway model, salesperson, chef, TV personality, author and restaurateur.

Now she’ll step onstage to star in a one-woman show about her life, Please Underestimate Me. She co-wrote the autobiographical play and will perform its world premiere at Olney Theatre Center in Olney, Maryland, on June 3.

“I’m reconnecting with the parts of myself, while I’m also sharing the story,” Hall said in an interview with the Beacon. She intends “to live out loud and to really explore why I’m here — to not play it safe,” she said.

Now 61, Hall, who lives in Washington, D.C., says she wouldn’t trade her current life for her earlier years.

“I have no qualms about aging,” Hall said. “I feel the wisdom, and I appreciate the confidence that I have that I didn’t have as a younger person.”

In fact, she said, “I really want people to lean into that wisdom that we have garnered over the years.”

Instead of fighting the passage of time, older adults can show the younger generation how to age well, assuring them that “this age is going to be amazing. You can step into your confidence, and you will own all of the pieces of yourself,” she said.

“We are giving our power away to younger people by saying, ‘I want to look like you, I want to be like you, I want to change my face and my body like yours’ — and I refuse to do it.”

Nashville childhood

As a child in Nashville, Tennessee, Hall was a self-described “theater kid,” putting on plays and puppet shows at summer camp at Sewanee, the University of the South. Acting ran in the family; one of her uncles was an actor, and she watched him perform on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning musical Bubbling Brown Sugar.

Hall followed her older sister, Kim, to Howard University, and graduated with a degree in accounting. After two years as a CPA at Price Waterhouse in Tampa, though, she decided to quit and move to Paris to be a model (she’s an inch shy of six feet tall).

“My grandmother said, ‘It is your job to be happy, not to be rich,’ and I truly embody that,” she said.

In fact, it was her grandmother, Freddie Mae Glover, who first taught Hall to cook. Hall discovered her cooking prowess by perfecting her grandmother’s biscuit recipe.

After a few years overseas, where Hall learned to appreciate fine cuisine, she moved back to D.C. and, with the encouragement of some friends, started a lunch-delivery business “as a fluke,” she said. “I was always doing something. I was always selling something, whether it was water filters or what — girl, I was always doing it. I was always creating a job.”

Glover paid for her to attend culinary school, L’Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, Maryland, but her memory began to slip, first in her recipes. She died of Alzheimer’s before she could see her granddaughter graduate.

Hall began as a sous chef in D.C. hotels and worked her way up to executive chef. She got her big television break when she was 44, after she had learned how to “work her quirk,” as she puts it. That’s when she landed a spot on Bravo’s “Top Chef” reality show in 2008, becoming an audience favorite, thanks to her humor and authenticity. She later became a judge on that show after cooking live on “Good Morning America,” serving up her granny’s meatloaf and treats like lemon ginger cake in a tin can.

Then she hopped over to Food Network, judging cooking shows on that cable channel. She then co-hosted the Emmy-winning ABC daytime TV show “The Chew” for seven years.

With her easygoing, big-sister advice, Hall appears as comfortable with celebrities as she is with her fans. She has hobnobbed on live television with the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore and a few Muppets (Cookie Monster and the Swedish Chef, of course).

By the time she opened a restaurant of her own in Brooklyn, New York, in 2016, Hall had made a name for herself. Although that restaurant, Southern Kitchen, closed the following year, some of its dishes are on the brand-new menu at her new one. Bumblebirds opened in D.C. in March with its fried chicken named after her other grandmother, Thelma.

Hall helps out at the new restaurant from time to time, welcoming guests as if they’re family.

After all, she said, they are “the reason I have a job. And I like people. That’s my superpower: I genuinely like people.”

From kitchen to theater

Hall got the idea for the memoir-play during a career pause in 2018, when “The Chew” ended.

“I was looking around for my next project, and I thought, what about a variety show like ‘The Carol Burnett Show’?” she said. As she told WTOP, “I wanted to be the Black Carol Burnett.”

Friends helped her shape that idea into a variety show of vignettes from her life, from summer camp to television. One friend was all in: Leslie Thomas, showrunner of “The Chew,” surprised Hall by saying she’d help out on the project. Thomas and her partner, Lori Kaye, started working on the script with Hall three years ago.

Last year Hall told an interviewer for the New York Times about the script in progress.

“When I read a profile of her in the New York Times in which she said she was working on a one-woman show, I immediately called her and said, ‘Let’s workshop this right now,’” said Jason Loewith, Olney Theatre Center’s artistic director. Hall and her sister, who lives in Olney, are frequent audience members there.

Behind the scenes, Hall has been practicing for the stage for years. She appeared on “General Hospital” and voiced a few animated shows years ago, and more recently she hired an acting coach and has been honing her skills in any way she can.

“I knew I wanted to do it, but I can’t just walk out and do a play,” she said.

She appeared on “Gossip Girl” and did a few voiceovers for NPR. “I was really in it and trying to change my focus to this [acting]. So it wasn’t, like, just put me in, coach,” she said.

During Please Underestimate Me, Hall will invite volunteers from the audience to join her onstage to deliver a line or two. An audience cameo as a hairstylist, for instance, should get some laughs, she said.

Although she’s mildly worried about forgetting her lines — after all, she’ll be onstage for more than an hour — Hall trusts that her audience will be forgiving.

“Being that I’m menopausal, I have brain farts,” she admitted. “I can work my way through it, but it is a concern.”

Volunteer life heals

When Hall isn’t in all-day rehearsals, she’s likely with her husband, Matt Lyons, or volunteering her time.

“I grew up watching my grandparents give back,” she said. “It has been a part of who I am.”

It may come as no surprise that Hall volunteers for organizations that fight hunger, like Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen Chef Network, DC Central Kitchen and Feeding America. She has helped pack a million meals with AARP Foundation’s Summer of Service to Seniors.

She also prioritizes children (she’s the mother of a stepson) and gives her time to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as well as 4-H, GenYouth, Helen Keller International and Beyond Bedtime, a reading program. Here in D.C., she’s the culinary ambassador for the Smithsonian National Museum for African American History and Culture’s café.

Her other cause is Alzheimer’s (she volunteers for the Alzheimer’s Association), in honor of her grandmother. Hall herself has the gene for late-onset Alzheimer’s. She tries to stave if off by getting brain scans, exercising and eating well.

“You can kick the can down the road if you take care of yourself, right?” she said.

When she’s helping others, whatever the cause, Hall finds a sense of purpose. Volunteering has been her compass in times of transition.

“When you’re in the doldrums or you feel like you’re lost, [if] you do something for someone else, it sort of heals that part of you that is lacking,” she said. “It just feels good to give back.”

Hall, whose motto is “Say yes. Adventure follows, then growth,” often encourages her viewers to keep an open mind through life. She certainly has.

“I love having new experiences,” she said. “I realize that that’s not everybody, but I think everybody can find a thing that makes them happy and to try new things, even if it’s in your city, going a new route home. Because you’ll find something.”

Carla Hall in Please Underestimate Me runs from June 3 to July 12 at the Mulitz- Gudelsky Theatre Lab at the Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Rd., Olney, MD. Those 65 and older get $5 off most weeknight performances. For tickets, go to olneytheatre.org/carlahall or call the box office at (301) 924-3400.