Tiffany Haddish says she wasn’t paid ‘a dime’ for her first movie and was given 10 DVD copies instead
Topics: Film and TV, Celebrity
Callum Jones
Featured Image Credit: Paul Archuleta/Getty Images David Livingston/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Topics: Film and TV, Celebrity
While Hollywood and the film industry is seen as pretty lucrative by many, there is no questioning that there are a lot of problems.
The SAG-AFTRA strike is a pretty obvious one that has divided much of the industry.
Everyone from Aaron Paul to Mandy Moore has revealed how much money they have earned from their successful films and TV shows.
And now Tiffany Haddish has also revealed in a video interview with the Associated Press that she did not earn 'a dime' off her first-ever movie.
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Haddish claims this was even the case after it started airing on network television and a bunch of streaming platforms, following the success of Girls Trip.
The much-loved 2017 comedy, starring Haddish and the likes of Regina Hall and Jada Pinkett Smith, really shot her into the spotlight.
Off the back of that, Haddish won the Supporting Actress prize from the New York Film Critics circle, subsequently propelling some of her previous lesser-know work into the limelight.
Speaking to AP, the actor revealed that she starred in a non-union film prior to her breakthrough in 2017, a project she says she was promised $1,200 for.
But, according to Haddish, she did not make a single cent.
She said: "My very first movie I ever did that I was the star in, I was homeless while I was shooting that movie.
"They were supposed to pay me $1,200 to do the movie. I wasn’t in the union. It was non union film so there was nothing I could do about it.
"They never paid me. They never paid me a dime. The producers gave me 10 DVDs and said, ‘Sell those. Good luck'. I never saw the movie. "
Haddish continued: "Then Girls Trip comes out in 2017. That movie is all over BET, VH1…this network, this streaming. It’s everywhere that movie! I don’t get a dime. It’s the second worst movie I was ever in. Not a penny."
But while she may have not been paid a dime for that unnamed project, Haddish did reveal in 2020 that she received a whopping $80,000 for Girls Trip.
Telling Cosmopolitan last year, Haddish revealed that she used the pay check to finish off paying the house she bought after The Carmichael Show season one.
"People told me to spend it in other ways, but I used it to pay off the house because I was always afraid of being homeless again," she said.
"Now I have a surplus of money, but I’m still afraid of being poor again. Every movie I made, I would just buy another piece of land or a house."