Cristela Alonzo claims she was paid NOTHING for the Cristela pilot and her white co-creator got three times more money when she sold the ABC sitcom
- The American comedian became the first Latina woman to create, produce, write, and star in her own US primetime comedy with her show Cristela in 2014
- Alonzo, 41, claimed she was not paid for the pilot episode, and that her white co-creator was paid three times more than her when she sold the idea
- Cristella was cancelled in 2015 after one season due to consistently lower ratings, according to ABC
Cristela Alonzo has claimed she was victim to shocking pay disparities with her eponymous sitcom.
The American comedian became the first Latina woman to create, produce, write, and star in her own US primetime comedy with her show Cristela in 2014.
Five years after it was cancelled following the first season, Alonzo has said that she was not treated the same as her co-creator when it came to pay and that she was not supported by her writing team.
Speaking out: Cristela Alonzo has claimed she was victim to shocking pay disparities with her eponymous sitcom
Alonzo, 41, took to Twitter on Sunday to claim she was not paid for the pilot episode, and that her co-creator, Kevin Hench, who is Caucasian, was paid three times more than her when she sold the idea.
She made the remarks as she shared an article from 2017 about Lena Dunham selling her show Girls with a page-and-a-half-long pitch and no characters or plot.
Alonzo wrote: ‘I got paid $0 for my sitcom pilot. When I sold my show, my white partner got 3 x more money then [sic] me AND an overall deal… I was ‘not ready’ to get one.’
‘The name of the show was Cristela. I also offered to shoot the show in English/Spanish. I wasn’t the highest paid person on it.’
The Texas native added: ‘And people wonder why I haven’t come back to TV… The support I had in 2014-2015 was non-existent.’
No pilot: Alonzo claimed on Twitter that she was never paid for the pilot of her ABC sitcom, Cristela, which premiered in October 2014
Speaking out: Alonzo also gave examples of how some of the staff did not have her back in the form of support
Kind words: The actress and producer did go on to praise Pixar, whom she worked with when she starred in Cars 3 as Cruz Ramirez
Alonzo went on to claim that she wasn’t supported by staff on the show, tweeting: ‘Also, the writers I couldn’t stand on my show that like to take credit for the good parts of it while blaming me for the bad parts are now running another Latino show’.
The actress and producer did go on to praise Pixar, whom she worked with when she starred in Cars 3 as Cruz Ramirez.
‘By the way, starring in Cars 3 was the thing I did right after my show was canceled and let me say….PIXAR IS AMAZING TO WORK WITH.’
DailyMail.com has contacted ABC for comment.
The Cristela series, co-created by Alonzo and Kevin Hench, chronicled the life of Cristela Hernandez, a Mexican-American law school graduate living in Dallas.
The storyline centered on her character’s push to live the American Dream by working as an unpaid intern at a law firm, all while dealing with the concerns of her family.
The sitcom saw her struggle to cope with her sister Daniela [Maria Canals-Barrera] -who thinks she should get a paying job – her brother-in-law Felix [Carlos Ponce] – who thinks of her as a freeloader – and her mother Natalia [Terri Hoyos] – who wants her to settle down and marry.
In total, 22 episodes episodes aired from October 2014 until April 2015.
Cristella was cancelled the following month due to consistently lower ratings throughout the season, according to ABC.
Major breakthrough: With Cristela, the actress became the first Latina to create, produce, write, and star in her own primetime comedy