Meet Carolina Espiro

Hi Carolina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Thank you VoyageLA for inviting me! My backstory would have to start at Chapman University. I was a Theater Performance major but it was always my plan to pursue an acting career in film and television. At the time, the thought of directing always filled me with joy and it was something my dad predicted I would be best at. (Yeah, yeah you were right dad.) But it was so overwhelming and I wasn’t really trained in it. I wasn’t ready to give up my acting classes to pursue something new.

During my years in the entertainment industry working as a professional actress, signs came and went that told me that I needed to get behind the camera. Opportunities arrived to direct theater here and there, and there was even a point in time where I produced and directed a couple seasons of a comedic web reality series called Urban Nature Man with my husband Matthew Jaeger as the host. Our crew consisted of me and my DSLR. Incredibly, we had some execs interested but they wanted to see more before committing and we just didn’t have the funding (or the energy) to go for a third season. It broke my heart but we had to let it go. I was happy with how far we went despite knowing nothing other than what I gleaned from my experience on set.

But it wasn’t enough and I just didn’t feel confident that I had the knowledge or the resources it took to direct a film. The question always came, do I need to go back to school? I opted to just wait and see if someone would magically appear and let me direct their script. They never did.

Does this mean I have to start writing? UGH.

20 years had passed. Pandemic hit and so did the realization that I ran out of excuses, I had to face my fears. I knew for certain that if it didn’t happen now, it would never happen. They always say, write what you know. So I did.

THE AVON LADY is a comedic short film that I wrote and directed. It was inspired by my mother’s experience immigrating to Los Angeles from Chile. The story follows Rosa, an immigrant grandmother, who faces her fears of speaking English to become an all-American Avon Lady. She’s a fantastic failure until she meets an eccentric customer who shows her that she’ll need more than English to make that sale. I cast my mother in the lead role.

I am so proud of this film because it isn’t only an immigrant story. It’s a tale about someone who has found the courage to step outside of the boundaries of their comfort, whether physically or mentally, in hopes of achieving a dream. For my mother, it was financial independence in a foreign land. For me, it’s becoming a filmmaker.

It’s now over a year later and we are enjoying a successful festival run having just won Best Comedy at the Oscar-Qualifying, BAFTA-Qualifying LA Shorts International Film Festival. We have also been selected to screen at the Burbank International Film Festival on September 21st at 7pm. More info at BurbankFilmfest.org!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As a burgeoning actress, I thoroughly believed that my theater education was all I needed to become a raging success in Hollywood. But I was missing a crucial thing that no one warned me about. My identity.

Growing up Chilean-American in the ’90s, I experienced what most immigrant kids did. We thought we were also “white.” That is until we went to middle school where we realized with utter shock that we weren’t. That led to high school where we did everything we could to remedy that. Colored lenses, bleached hair, “Americanized” names (Hi my name is Carol!)

But when I moved to Hollywood to be an actress, suddenly, I wasn’t “Latina” enough. Where’s your accent? Can’t you be more spicy? More sexy? More red lipstick?

The biggest obstacle was that I wasn’t fluent in Spanish. My manager at the time sat me down and told me the Hispanic market was booming and that I was missing out on opportunities by not being bilingual. How can you be an immigrant and NOT know Spanish?

So what happened was…

My parents and I came to LA when I was two years old and they believed that to achieve the American dream, they absolutely HAD to learn English. So they cut the Spanish channels and stopped speaking Spanish at home. It wasn’t too long before they realized I couldn’t communicate with any of my other family members. So when I was nine years old, they sent me to live with my grandparents in Chile for a year. It wasn’t easy, I was endearingly made fun of as the little gringa who spoke Spanish with an accent. Although I was able to eventually communicate, it was not without some scarring. When I returned to the States, I was completely fluent in SPANGLISH. I would come home from school in tears because the kids were making fun of the way I talked. Through my sobs, I cried that I never wanted to speak Spanish again.

Fast forward to my adulthood, where the thought of speaking Spanish to any native speaker gave me sweaty palms. I had developed a real phobia that strangled any attempt of becoming fluent, but I knew I had to do it. So at 29, I packed up and moved back to Chile to re-connect to my roots and re-learn Spanish. When I returned a year later, I spoke well enough to get myself an incredible commercial agent that was looking for bilingual actors. In the next few months, I booked three national commercials airing in both Spanish and English markets. I quit my side gig and acting has been my day job ever since. I finally arrived to where I needed to be, but it’s no mystery why I connected to The Avon Lady so deeply.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am happy to say that I can shake a person’s hand and say, “Hi, I’m Carolina Espiro and I’m a filmmaker.” However, I’m at an important time in my life where I’m defining who I am as a storyteller. I’m influenced by my family, my husband, my environment and my community.

I am Chilean. We are passionate and we are jokesters. So my films will mostly likely always have an element of humor in them. The Avon Lady is a comedy because I wanted to tell an immigrant story where we can laugh at our struggles and our fears while acknowledging what put them there.

I am American. So I will never stop fighting for the underdog. My stories will always reflect in some way the pursuit of happiness and lifting the voices of those who have been silenced or overlooked.

I am the wife of an incredibly talented actor, winemaker, and kung fu artist. Better believe I’m going to do my damndest to put him in every movie I make (unless he bows out of his own volition as he did with The Avon Lady.) Because without him, I never would have had the courage or drive to be a filmmaker.

I am an LA girl and always will be. I’m surrounded by a swirl of exotic food, culture, and landscapes, not to mention the film industry capital of the world. It is the director’s chair from which I tell my stories.

I am a proud member of a diverse and rich community of artists, dancers, doers and dreamers. My stories will always have heart and a bit of whimsy. I want to lift people to the heights of new perspectives, then firmly plant them on the ground and ask, “So whatcha gonna do about it?”

Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I am a hula dancer. Not as in hula hoop. As in the cultural dance of Hawaiʻi. It’s mainly surprising because I’m not Hawaiian and I’ve never lived there. So how did that happen?

My family used to travel there a lot for vacation and I was always drawn to hula but thought I needed to be native to study this art form. Turns out the hula community is like California in that it’s very diverse. As long as you have the love, respect and devotion to present it authentically according to the lineage, you are welcome. To dance hula is to tell the story and history of the Hawaiian people and carries with it a great kuleana (responsibility.) I have been studying at Hālau Nā Mamo O Panaʻewa in Glendale, CA under Kumu Hula Chase Keoki Wang for 9 years and have recently graduated as Hoʻopaʻa (drummer/chanter.)

Dancing hula engages almost every story-telling skill that I possess: movement, expression, singing, playing instruments, and chanting. Every part of you is needed to express the meaning beneath these songs… Come to think of it, it’s really no wonder I became involved in hula. I’m fortunate to have a kumu (hula teacher) that encouraged me to direct my first music video featuring my hula solo performance It was shot on location in Hanalei, Kauai under the light of a full moon. A feat I’m truly proud of.

I can not begin to express the profound and direct impact family has made to my life as an artist. Whether it’s my husband, mi familia Chilena, kuʻu hula ʻohana, or my community. They have made me who I am today while simultaneously reminding me of who I always was. In that vein, I am developing two feature films, a black comedy called “The Vintner” and a travel family rom-com called “Searching for Páz,” slated to shoot in Chile. Through them I hope to honor my family as I continue to tell their stories of struggle and triumph, all with a healthy sprinkling of laughter.