NEW YORK
For all of the work Regina Hall has put into honing her craft, the 55-year-old actress still traces her deft screen presence — the comic intelligence, the dramatic restraint, the inherent magnetism — to her upbringing in Northwest Washington.
Yes, Hall would study acting at the William Esper Studio in New York. She would also pick up plenty of lessons on the audition circuit in her 20s. But before any of that, the D.C. of the 1970s and ’80s taught her to consider all manner of perspectives.
She attended Immaculata, a now-defunct all-girls Catholic school in Tenleytown, and worked as a ticket taker at DAR Constitution Hall and a popcorn hawker at the Mazza Gallerie movie theater. Drugs and crime were prevalent in the city, she can attest, but so were camaraderie and culture. All the while, a diverse community created a diversity of life experience.
“Something fundamental about the core of who I am is because of that city and still resides here,” Hall says, tapping her heart during a conversation on a late April evening in Midtown Manhattan. “It shaped how I see the world, how I see people, how I see women, men, race. D.C. was special in that way. It was a city that had a lot of melding, and I had friends from all walks of life.”
Hall’s career has proved fittingly varied. Her comic filmography is staggering: “Girls Trip,” “Death at a Funeral,” “Barbershop: The Next Cut,” “Shaft” and many more. Also a sly dramatic actress, she counts the coming-of-age barnburner “The Hate U Give,” the surrealist nightmare “Master” and the murky mystery series “Nine Perfect Strangers” among her credits.
Joining a storied lineage, Hall even hosted the 2022 Academy Awards with Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes — a show made infamous by “the slap.” That hosting experience was nerve-racking for a performer who is neither a stand-up comic nor a stage actor — qualities that tend to define awards show emcees. “At one point backstage, I was like, ‘Maybe I should go home,’” she says. Still, momentum won out, and Hall was largely praised for her performance. “Once you say yes, it kind of moves. It’s like a machine,” she says.
Thus is Hall’s go-with-the-flow mantra. After portraying a serene revolutionary in last year’s Oscar-winning “One Battle After Another,” her next role was … a ghostly pirate fish in “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants”? Sure! She then voiced a diva of a sheep in last month’s charming murder mystery “The Sheep Detectives.” And she’s starring in a “Scary Movie” reboot that hits theaters Friday, 26 years after Hall broke out in the original horror-flick spoof.
“She has a depth of human experience, of lived experience, that she can draw from for both comedic and dramatic, and she’s not afraid to explore either side,” says Sterling K. Brown, who worked with Hall on the 2022 mockumentary “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” “She is a woman who is probably the most comfortable with who she is that I have ever met, and I think that level of comfort — of exploration of the good of Regina and her own foibles — allows her to just dive in.”
Hall wasn’t always planning the show-business plunge. She studied communications at Fordham University in the Bronx and got a master’s degree in journalism from New York University. She even considered becoming a nun in her youth (and briefly revisited the idea at age 40, after a bad breakup threw her for a loop).
When her father died after a stroke while she was at NYU, the sudden loss reframed her aspirations. Having booked a McDonald’s spot, after a friend steered her toward commercials to make extra cash, Hall relished the experience and decided that life was too short to embark on anything but a joyful career. Thus, acting became her escape.
“It was a very nice alternate reality,” Hall says, “that was great and consuming and challenging — but fun.”
By 2000, Hall had snagged only bit parts in “The Best Man” — a dramedy from her future “Girls Trip” director, Malcolm D. Lee — and “Love & Basketball” when she auditioned for the motormouthed Brenda in the first “Scary Movie.” Nothing about Hall’s background hinted that an ace improviser was entering the premises. But when director Keenen Ivory Wayans asked Hall to ad-lib, she knocked the curveball out of the park.
“She came in the room and did her thing, and we were all blown away at how funny she was,” recalls Wayans’s brother Shawn, who co-wrote the movie and played Brenda’s boyfriend. “She had a real clear take on the character, and she was quick on her feet.”
Wayans rattles off a slew of flattering adjectives to describe Hall: pleasant, sincere, warm, friendly, fun. “She’s just a joy,” he adds. Craig Mazin, who wrote the “Sheep Detectives” and worked with Hall on two “Scary Movie” sequels, concurs. “When the cameras aren’t rolling, she’s hysterical,” he says. “If you’re not laughing, she’s going to fix that real quick.”
That much is clear as Hall flashes her warmth and quick wit over tea at Revel & Rye in Times Square. When a patron several tables over repeatedly sneezes, she pauses to utter “Bless you” each time. “I don’t know who they are,” she cheerfully concedes, “but they’re back there.” And if you think that this tourist destination is the kind of place where Hall might get spotted, you’re correct. At one point, a woman politely interjects to inform Hall that she’s “fabulous.” When I try to pay the bill, the waiter waves me off and simply says it was an honor to serve her.
“I think her early career probably was focused mostly on primarily Black audiences,” Brown says. “Regina can roll into any beauty shop or barbershop, and they will be like, ‘Oh, s—, it’s Regina Hall!’ Now, I think with this latest run of things, Regina can walk into anywhere, and people will be like, ‘Oh, s—, it’s Regina Hall.’”
Leading a $140 million comedic juggernaut like “Girls Trip” — in which Hall played the lifestyle guru who brings together the now-iconic Flossy Posse — will do that. When that raunchy romp hit theaters in the summer of 2017, Hall was already shooting her next triumph, portraying a fiercely protective manager at a Texas “breastaurant” in “Support the Girls.” The movie didn’t light up the box office but did net critical acclaim, myriad honors for Hall (including a New York Film Critics Circle prize) and a spot on former president Barack Obama’s list of favorite movies from 2018.
So did that one-two punch mark a turning point in her career?
“Now that I think about it? Yes, completely,” Hall says. “I’ve been around a long time, so I certainly haven’t had a meteoric rise. It’s been nice, slow and steady. So I don’t know that it changed in the way that it suddenly was like, ‘Oh, my goodness, she’s everywhere!’ I was always working with amazing people, but I just was expanding that to include a lot of people who I really dreamt of working with.”
Exhibit A: Paul Thomas Anderson (or PTA, as the filmmaker’s fans call him). Hall, an obsessive admirer of Anderson’s work, from “Boogie Nights” to “Phantom Thread,” recalls asking her agent for a meeting with Anderson long ago and getting a swift “uh, no.” “I was like, ‘I wonder if I can stalk him?’” Hall quips. “But that felt not right. I don’t think you’re supposed to stalk people.”
Eventually, though, chance intertwined their lives: Hall became neighbors with Anderson and his partner, actress Maya Rudolph, in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley. By 2024, when Anderson cast Hall as the far-left activist Deandra in “One Battle,” the PTA legend had dissipated. She simply saw Anderson as the loving father of four next door.
“He just became Paul,” Hall says. “But by the time he asked me to do the film? He became PTA again.”
Hall knows her way around a broadly sketched character — like, say, Brenda, who meets her demise in the first “Scary Movie” after her incessant babbling prompts a movie audience to bludgeon her. But Hall’s standout scene in “One Battle,” when Deandra stealthily tracks down Chase Infiniti’s Willa, reveals a larger-than-life performer who knows how to rein it in. Her Deandra is calm but forceful while sharing the extraction plan for a young woman on the run. Empathetic but urgent. Savvy but scared. In an impressive turn, Hall deftly tiptoes through that maze of contradictions.
“Being in movies like the ‘Scary’ movies is a sign of real talent,” Mazin says. “It is not meant to be some sort of walled-off little area where actors can never escape. So when Paul Thomas Anderson recognizes something like that, it warms my heart. I just think, ‘There’s a smart guy who understands Regina can do literally anything.’”
For Hall, “anything” recently meant returning to the Scary Movie franchise for the fifth time — but the first since 2006. As Brenda, a bubbly bestie with a knack for returning from the dead, Hall reunited not just with Anna Faris (her co-star in each previous appearance), but also Shawn Wayans and his brother Marlon, the actors and franchise co-creators who left the satirical saga after the second movie. And there’s a newer wave of horror hits — “Get Out,” “Sinners,” “M3gan,” “Weapons,” “The Substance” — ripe for skewering.
“I felt like it was a great time in the world for a comedy,” Hall says. “When I read the draft, I was like, ‘Y’all are crazy.’ I like that they went for it, and it felt like everything was right. The script, the timing, the cast, the moment, the films to parody were all there.”
Hall has had plenty more on her plate. Last month, she delivered a set at Netflix’s roast of Kevin Hart with deadpan ruthlessness. Next month, she appears as a soccer agent connecting with friends new and old in Peacock’s “The Five-Star Weekend.” She has also spent the spring shooting the hostage drama “Rabbit, Rabbit” with Adam Driver.
After losing her father all those years ago, Hall leaned on her mother as a source of love, support and life-affirming joy until her 2021 death. Amid the surge in work, acclaim and accolades, that loss still hits hard.
“The only thing that’s not satisfying is my mom is not here,” Hall says. “That’s probably the hardest part. But then, at the same time, I’m sure she is an angel making it all happen.”
Divine intervention or not, Hall has a knack for finding her way through an eclectic career. A quarter-century after some inspired improv entrenched the Washingtonian’s place in Hollywood, she’s still making it up as she goes.
“I just stay open,” she says. “So I’ll keep seeing what sweet surprises life offers.”
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