Alonzo ready for her Hollywood comeback
Comedian releases new special years after sitcom axed
Cristela Alonzo, 43, has been in the midst of a soft return to Hollywood after years of feeling abandoned by it. Her trailblazing feat of becoming the first Latina to create and star in her own network sitcom, “Cristela,” was short-lived and, as she boldly made known in the days following its 2015 cancellation, often frustrating. In the time since, she shifted her focus to community activism.
As she has been slowly circling her way back into the industry fold, her comedic observations about life — which first propelled her career nearly two decades ago — remain a key constant. More than five years after her first Netflix stand-up special, “Lower Classy,” which centered on her upbringing in South Texas, the comedian has returned with a new special for the streaming giant titled “Middle Classy.”
That a follow-up special materialized at all was part of the reacclimation process, she says.
“You get to the point where you kind of see that the dust is settled with the awkwardness and the initial shock of everything,” Alonzo says. “Now I feel 100 percent. (‘Lower Classy’) was the first thing that I wanted to do — the special was kind of like a
‘let me test the waters.’ But can I get another special? Do I want to do another special? And I loved it. I always loved it. But sometimes you love things so much that it hurts when it doesn’t work out.
“I feel like I’m in such a different place when it comes to understanding that, growing up, this dream was all I ever wanted. And the past couple of years, I realized that everything I’ve lived actually shapes the dream for me. I wasn’t sure if I was ever gonna feel really ready. And by ready, I mean excited to come back.”
If anything was clarifying about her time away, Alonzo says, it’s that she still has so much more to say — and some of those thoughts take form in “Middle Classy.” The special features appearances from Dolores
Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union 50 years ago with Cesar Chavez, as well as Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas — two figures in
politics and advocacy with whom Alonzo has developed close relationships through the outreach work she has devoted herself to in recent years.
“It was this thing where I thought: How can I show people where I am at in life, but also, how I’m different from other comics?” Alonzo says.
Alonzo’s persona — often punctuated by an openmouthed smile and wide eyes for effect — soaks up the spotlight in this new hour, as she playfully banters with the audience as if making the rounds at a large Latino family gathering. She leans into self-mockery while providing social commentary on a range of topics: her bout with COVID-19 (which delayed the taping of the special), growing up in a mixed-status family and
her first experience at Olive Garden, as well as living in poverty and the revelations that come with access to health care.
Comedian Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, a longtime friend, describes her as being “as real as it gets”: “When you hear her tell stories about her family or even the way she talks about the racist experiences that she’s had growing up — she has everybody cracking up at her expense, but at the same time, it’s not degrading in any way.”
Alonzo grew up one of four kids of a hard-working single mother. After her mother died in 2003, Alonzo couldn’t afford therapy, so she started writing about her mom as an outlet for her grief — and unlocked material for stand-up comedy.
By 2013, Alonzo had received the opportunity to turn her stand-up material into a semiautobiographical TV pilot, “Cristela.” Alonzo’s TV alter ego was an aspiring lawyer living rent-free with her sister’s family, alongside their mother, while she finishes law school. Launching the same year “black-ish” made its debut on the network in 2014, “Cristela” was slotted on Friday nights, sandwiched between “Last Man Standing” and “Shark Tank.”
It was canceled after one season. Days after the cancellation, Alonzo wrote a blog post decrying the lack of network support:
“It was a multi-cam sitcom that SOMETIMES aired on Friday nights. I say sometimes because a lot of times we were pre-empted for more important things like an Easter egg hunt happening in real time. Kidding. In reality, we were preempted for other things like a documentary on a parade and some other things I can’t remember. I think one night was a show about Christmas lights?”
Alonzo says she was more direct with network brass. “I let everybody know. Because, to me, if I don’t do it, who’s going to do it? I was very upset with everything. I got into a fight with a lot of people. Again, I was seen as ‘difficult.’ The question that I’d love to ask a lot is ‘Why?’ People hate ‘Why?’ ”
In the years after the cancellation of “Cristela,” Alonzo became the first Latina to voice a leading role in a Pixar movie as Cruz Ramirez in “Cars 3” and released her first Netflix special. She began work on a memoir, “Music to My Years,” and became heavily involved in advocacy work, championing issues such as immigration and universal health care.
“I was doing all this work and meeting more people, and in meeting more people, I was finding that people seemed very happy to meet me,” says Alonzo. “And they were talking about how my show was something that they really loved. And it felt so good to be remembered by, not the industry, but by people that saw it.”
The feedback motivated her enough to email her reps. She was ready to try again. This past October, she hosted the CW’s revival of the popular Nickelodeon game show “Legends of the Hidden Temple” and, by December, saw the debut of the Lifetime holiday movie she wrote, “Holiday in Santa Fe,” starring Mario Lopez and Emeraude Toubia. Alonzo has also been busy with production of “How to Make an American Son,” Christopher Oscar Pena’s coming-ofage comedy about a father and son who are living two different versions of the American dream.
Alonzo is not sure when she’ll be the creator and star of another TV show, but she has been reworking a pilot, loosely inspired by her time as a guest host on “The View”: “It’s basically a Latino Rachel Maddow, who moves into the big city and her appeal is that she can talk to everybody.”
When James Corden announced he was stepping down as host of “The Late Late Show,” Alonzo let it be known on Twitter that she was ready to inherit the role. “If I don’t throw my name out,” she says, “you’re gonna get a lot of the same people that you always get.”