Carla Guevara Laforteza: Internationally-Acclaimed Performer and Certified Katseye Mama

When you see videos of Sophia Laforteza, Filipina member (and leader!) of global pop girl group Katseye, performing at some of the biggest international music events—perhaps the 2026 Grammys or American Music Awards or on tour at a far-flung region of the globe—there’s an almost involuntary surge of Pinoy pride you feel. You think, This is a homegrown Filipina talent who has quite literally fought for a much-deserved spot on a mainstream global stage.

After all, Filipinos are a proud race, but we’re used to feeling small—literally and figuratively. But when you see someone like Sophia Laforteza, who gives the average Filipino the chance to be represented across the world, you feel seen as well. Your heart quite literally swells with pride, and you begin to wonder how a young Filipina managed to achieve such global superstardom.

But for veteran international actress Carla Guevara Laforteza—or simply “mom” to Sophia herself—this rise to the top was not only unsurprising, but also expected.

A Filipino Performing Legacy: From West End to Katseye

Excel Panlaque

“Sophia’s exceeded all my dreams and expectations. Super overachiever. She’s not following my footsteps but carving her own path. From the many steps that I took, she’s doing leaps and bounds. Of course, as a mother, I am so, so, so, so proud of her,” Guevara Laforteza begins, explaining how Sophia’s stardom makes her feel. “But,” she interjects, “as Carla, the mommy [and] performing artist, who does all these things also—not as well as she does, though—for me, it’s expected.”

Guevara Laforteza is a celebrated name in the international theater scene—someone who has played the roles of both Kim and Gigi in Miss Saigon in London’s West End in the 1990s, has appeared in numerous international and local productions, and is an award-winning actress in Philippine showbiz. It would be almost blasphemous to not acknowledge this pedigree when discussing the mother-daughter connection.

“If I may say so, she’s literally my clone in every way,” Guevara Laforteza shares. “The way we handle things, the way we think, the way we work—it’s identical.” In fact, the highly-publicized story of how Sophia didn’t tell her parents that she auditioned for Dream Academy, the reality show that was the origin story for Katseye, is actually merely history repeating itself. When Guevara Laforteza landed the role of Kim in a West End production of Miss Saigon at the age of 19, she didn’t tell her parents either, until the very last minute before flying to London. But we are getting ahead of our story.

Of course, for Guevara Laforteza, who has been an international performer for most of her life and has earned accolades for it, having one of her kids follow the same path did not come out of nowhere.

“Sophia, in the beginning, wanted to be a doctor, a pediatrician,” she says. “But she was also into the arts,” she clarifies, sharing that Sophia took the whole gamut of performing arts courses—dance, piano, what have you—while growing up. She and her husband Godfrey, himself a performing artist-turned-executive chef, allow their three children to just be, guiding them along. But when you are used to giving one hundred per cent in every performance, and aiming for the stars, it’s something you, inadvertently or not, pass on to your offspring. “I’m so proud of her,” Guevara Laforteza echoes again, adding, “But, I expected that. I expect that from each of my children. My eldest son, Basil, he’s always wanted to be a pilot. I expect him to be the most excellent pilot he can ever become. My son, Oreo, who’s into photography, I expect him to take the best photographs. These are all, for me, expected. So, I’m not surprised. But, I am very proud of that.”

Carla Guevara Laforteza: From Manila to the West End

Excel Panlaque

It would be so easy to tell a story of Pinoy excellence, and tell it by way of adding depth to Sophia’s story. But Carla Guevara Laforteza has quite the story all on her own, and it’s not to be overlooked. And Guevara-Laforteza is also quite the storyteller.

She begins to regale us with her own story of the spotlight, which began when, as a child, her beloved yaya Rebecca would take her to radio stations in Metro Manila, for Guevara Laforteza to sing on the airwaves. “And she would just call my mom, ‘Ma’am, listen to—whatever station—Carla’s about to sing!’ That’s how it started. My love for singing, I think, was really inborn,” Guevara Laforteza shares, explaining that her own was also an artist, and a beauty queen.

She then joined Repertory Philippines, getting cast in her first professional production, Aladdin. At the time, she deliberately flunked out of her strict Catholic all-girls school, so she could transfer to another school that was more accommodating with her fledgling career. After high school, she enrolled in DLSU-College of St. Benilde—”I don’t even remember what my course was. I just picked a course so I could be in college,” she says, to appease her conservative businessman father, who insisted she get a degree. But then she auditioned for Miss Saigon, and got in, and instead of going to her college classes, spent her days secretly going to workshops for dance, voice, and more, to prepare for the role. Her parents didn’t know she was skipping class, until the school informed them that their daughter was AWOL.

As it turns out, two years earlier, a 16-year-old Guevara Laforteza had been on a trip to New York with her family, and watched a staging of Miss Saigon with her dad. “I was beside my dad, I nudged him,” recalls Guevara Laforteza. “I said, ‘Dad, I want to do that. That’s gonna be me.’ And he was like, ‘go to school first.’”

And so, as a surprise for her parents, Guevara Laforteza chose to keep the fact that she made it into the Miss Saigon cast a secret—even after her school outed her—up until she, a minor, needed their signatures for travel documents for her to board the plane to London.

“Doon na sila nag-celebrate,” she quips. She was off to London, living her dream, following in the footsteps of the likes of Lea Salonga. When she returned, she chose to not only pursue more theater, but also Philippine showbiz, appearing on screen in skimpy bathing suits alongside the likes of Diether Ocampo, Onemig Bondoc, Jericho Rosales, and Ian Veneracion, once again shocking her conservative father, who resorted to asking her when she would return to school. “I said, ‘When I win an award,’” she narrates. “And then I won the PMPC Star Award for Best New Artist, so I had to go back to school.”

“But,” Guevara Laforteza continues, animatedly launching into the next chapter of her tale, “That same year I won the award, when my dad wanted me to go back to school, I tried to figure out a way to get out of the house, so I didn’t have to go back to school. So what did this rebellious girl do?” she asks, pointing at herself. “She got herself pregnant.”

“This is all an open secret,” Guevara Laforteza continues, and then proceeds to tell us how she and her husband moved to New York, where she gave birth to her firstborn Basil, and then Sophia, how her husband got into the culinary scene after starting as a delivery boy and working his way up, how they raised and expanded their family, and eventually ended up back in the Philippines, where she restarted her career and went on to have their third child, Oreo.

Carla Guevara Laforteza and the Katseye Mamas: A Long-Distance Support System

Excel Panlaque

With her daughter now based in Los Angeles for an international career that has gone supernova, you can’t help but wonder if Guevara Laforteza worries about Sophia on her own. “Again, I think I raised a clone of mine,” she says laughing. “So before she even does something, I already know what she’s going to do. I’m very confident and I trust her 100 percent with whatever decisions she will be making. She’s 23, a full-grown adult. She’s very responsible.”

They FaceTime each other almost every day, but apart from Katseye’s visit to Manila back in 2024, Guevara Laforteza has been unable to catch any of their shows abroad because of her own work commitments. “Not yet, especially not since Katseye exploded.”

“But you know the moms?” she continues, “the moms of Lara and Megan are constantly with them, and they video call me and Godfrey during concerts so we can watch them.” The Katseye Mamas, as she pegs them, actually have their own group chat. “That’s where we update each other with our children. We’re pretty close. It’s crazy. We’re from different parts of the world. We’ve only met each other once, and yet we feel like we’ve known each other forever.”

She continues, musing, “I guess it’s a certain kind of bond that you share because your daughters are all going through the same thing. Funny enough, we all have the personalities of our daughters and since our daughters all click, it was inevitable that the moms would click also.” It’s this closely-knit support system, she says, that keeps her worries about Sophia at bay, even if she’s so far away and off doing her own thing. Much like Guevara Laforteza herself once did, and continues to do.

A Filipino Trailblazer: Carla Guevara Laforteza’s Legacy Beyond the Stage

Excel Panlaque

Beyond the parallels, Guevara Laforteza points out the difference between her and her daughter. Despite both of them being part of a select list of Filipino talents who have gone on to conquer world stages, Guevara Laforteza says that her daughter’s dreams “are so much bigger than mine. Me kasi, I’m just happy performing. I’m just happy singing whether I’m on stage, on TV, or on film. But with Sophia, her dreams are so big. She wants to conquer the entire universe.”

Like any other doting mother, Guevara Laforteza turns wistful. “Sophia literally wants to show the entire world what she can do. She wants to make everybody happy. She knows she’s able to set a good example for girls like her, for Filipinos like her who have big dreams. She wants to inspire, she wants to do all these things. That’s our only difference.”

And yet, as we listen to Guevara Laforteza recount her life, and all the little steps she took in the beginning, all the sprints she took on to chase her own dream of being able to simply do what she loves, we can’t help but wonder if this isn’t exactly accurate.

Guevara Laforteza may downplay her own ability to inspire, but she is, in fact, a paragon of Pinoy pride herself. In the seemingly perpetually uphill battle of the Filipino to gain global ground, she has carved her own significant footholds—crevices which have given other Pinoys, such as her own daughter, space to plant their own feet solidly into, on their own climbs to the top. She herself has shown the entire world what she can do. She has set an example for Pinoys everywhere who have big dreams that they can, in fact, achieve it. And if her daughter’s dreams—which Guevara Laforteza claims are far bigger than her own—are any indication, then she herself has inspired.

Art and beauty direction by Mikiyo Ricamora. Photography by Excel Panlaque. Makeup by Cats Del Rosario. Hair by Patty Inojales. Styling by Gee Jocson.