Tiffany Haddish Says She Was Stiffed By Producers Of Her Non-Union Film Debut

Tiffany Haddish has first-hand experience on the importance of strong unions in Hollywood: She says she was stiffed by producers of her first – and non-union – film.

In a video interview with the Associated Press (watch it above), the actor says that prior to her 2017 movie breakthrough with Girls Trip, she took a non-union movie role for a promised $1,200.

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“My very first movie I ever did that I was the star in, I was homeless while I was shooting that movie,” Haddish said without identifying the film or the producers. “They were supposed to pay me $1,200 to do the movie. I wasn’t in the union. It was a 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 goes on to say that after the successful Girls Trip was released, the old non-union movie suddenly started cropping up everywhere to take advantage of her newfound fame.

“That movie [was] all over BET, VH1, the One TV, this network, this streaming,” she says. “It’s everywhere, that movie. I don’t get a dime…It’s the second worst movie I was ever in. And not a penny.”

Altough Haddish doesn’t name the film – or the one movie she did that was worse – her first film was 2005’s The Urban Demographic, a low-budget drama about a Seattle classical music radio station that switches to a rap format.

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