We didn’t have the ‘Hamilton’ casting that we have now … Everybody had to be so exact.” Breaking the comedic mold, making history “But it was because back then, casting was so literal.
In college, Alonzo had a voice teacher who told her that, as a Latina, the only viable stage roles that she could land would be for productions of “West Side Story” and “Chorus Line” - “and that was it,” she recalled incredulously.
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Bobby Bank / WireImageįor Alonzo, who was a self-proclaimed “big theater nerd in school” and always wanted to be on Broadway, the fact that she can now pay her bills and work in the arts is “such a bonus” and “just an absolute gift,” but it hasn’t been without her fair share of professional challenges. Cristela Alonzo headlines at Gotham Comedy Club on Apin New York. “One of the biggest questions I used to get asked all the time was: ‘How did you know you made it?’ And then I realized, ‘It was when I could put my debit card down for autopay on my bill,’” she said with a laugh. Throughout her storied career as an actor, writer, producer and stand-up comedian, she has spoken openly about growing up in poverty - an experience that, she reflected, “made me very fearless … because when you come from nothing, you feel like you’ve got nothing to lose.” I don’t have to stop being a kid ever.’” An upbringing that "made me fearless"īorn and raised in San Juan in Texas, Alonzo - the youngest of four children raised by a single mother - lived her childhood under extreme circumstances, squatting in an abandoned diner with her family for the first eight years of her life. Is that cool?’ That allows people to have fun, but also it lets the kids watch it and think, ‘Hey, I can do that as an adult.
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"We don’t have challenges where we’re climbing rocks - we have stuff that’s like, ‘Look, you need to fill this bucket full of lava, hold it on your head, and we’re just going to go from there. Because as grown-ups, we don’t get the chance to get dirty as much as we should,” she told NBC News in a recent interview. “With adults, we can make it more challenging, they can get dirtier, and that’s what’s fun.