Tiffany Haddish was offered $1,200 for her first movie: 'They never paid me a dime'

Tiffany Haddish revealed in a video interview with the Associated Press that she did not earn a penny off her first movie, even after it started airing on network television and various streaming platforms following the success of “Girls Trip.”

The 2017 comedy, co-starring Regina Hall, Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith, served as Haddish’s industry breakout. She earned rave reviews and won the supporting actress prize from the New York Film Critics circle, all of which created heightened interest in the work she shot prior.

Haddish spoke to AP about Hollywood’s changing financial systems amid the SAG-AFTRA strike. She revealed that before “Girls Trip” she starred in a non-union film and was promised she’d be paid $1,200 dollars. She never made a cent.

“My very first movie I ever did that I was the star in, I was homeless while I was shooting that movie,” Haddish said. “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.”

“Then ‘Girls Trip’ comes out in 2017,” she continued. “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.”

Haddish revealed in 2020 that she received an $80,000 paycheck for “Girls Trip.” Speaking to Cosmopolitan magazine last year, Haddish revealed that she used her entire paycheck to finish paying off the house she bought after the first season of “The Carmichael Show.” She didn’t want to waste a beat in paying off the house out of fear she’d go homeless again.

“I started trying to figure out how to create generational wealth. The fastest way to do it and the first way you should go about doing it is buy some land,” Haddish said. “So before we even got into Season 2 of ‘The Carmichael Show,’ I bought a house. Everybody told me I should wait, but I didn’t care. I just knew I was going to have to always make enough money to take care of me and the house, and that’s what I did.”

Haddish continued, “Between that show’s next season, the ‘Keanu’ movie, and making sure I can live comfortably off of $500 a month, I was able to pay off half the house. The ‘Girls Trip’ check was the final check. 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. Now I have a surplus of money,” Haddish concluded. "But I’m still afraid of being poor again. Every movie I made, I would just buy another piece of land or a house.”

“Girls Trip” was a box office hit in 2017 with $140 million worldwide on a $19 million production budget. Director Malcolm D. Lee has long maintained a sequel is still in the works, but Universal Pictures has yet to announce anything official.