Chapter 1: What challenges did Cristela Alonzo face growing up in an abandoned diner?
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That's plus.npr.org. Thank you so much. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we continue our end of the year series featuring some of our favorite interviews of 2025. This is an interview I recorded last September. If you're not familiar with the comedy of my guest, Cristela Alonso, I think the best way of introducing her is with a clip. But first, I should set it up.
Cristela is Mexican-American, the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her mother was living in Texas, undocumented, and pregnant with Cristela, her fourth child, when she left her abusive husband and raised her four children on her own. Cristela grew up in a Texas border town. This clip, like much of Cristela's comedy, is autobiographical.
My family, we're from South Texas, you know? We're from Mexico. That's South Texas. It's South Texas. It's kind of South Texas. It's like South Texas. I grew up in a mixed status family. If you guys don't know what that is, that means that half of us were documented, half of us were undocumented, and we're not telling you which one's which. Guess what? We all look alike.
We didn't have a lot of money growing up, you know. We had to share a bathroom and a birth certificate.
That was from Cristela Alonso's first Netflix comedy special from 2017 called Lower Classy. It was followed by her 2022 special Middle Classy. Her new one, Upper Classy, is now streaming on Netflix. You can tell from the titles that class and money have been defining issues in her life because she grew up in extreme poverty.
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Chapter 2: How did Cristela's upbringing influence her comedy style?
Yes. So the women, once they were taken from their home, they were basically this man's property. And that's how my mom and my dad ended up together. And it was this culture, this environment where the women were submissive to the men. My mom and my dad got married through the church so they couldn't divorce. You know, my mom left my dad, but they never divorced because they were Catholic.
That was how much my mom couldn't do it. So she stayed married to him. But after they got married, because he was a man, he would drink a lot, be very physically abusive to her, had another family. That's the thing that made my mom leave my dad when she discovered. The church doesn't approve of that. Absolutely. You know, absolutely.
So it was this thing where, you know, she became the first woman in her family to leave her husband. You never left your husband. You didn't divorce. You didn't separate. You stuck through and you dealt with it. And she decided to leave him with her. I mean, this woman had like a second grade education, couldn't speak the language here.
And she decided that that was better than staying married to my dad.
So this is at the point where they're already in the U.S.?
They had been coming back and forth from the U.S. and Mexico. So they would come here and then they'd go back to Mexico. They were trying to establish a life here, but then they would go back. for a couple years. It's one of those, it's really off and on.
That's the thing that I think is one of those perspectives in immigration that we don't talk about enough, is immigrants come to this country mostly... out of a need. It's in search of this opportunity that they don't have at home. But if my parents could have made it happen, if they could have had a decent life, they would have stayed in their home. They would have stayed in Mexico.
But they decided ultimately, the United States was a better opportunity for their children. And, you know, when my mom left my dad, because she was such a Catholic woman, She told my dad that his punishment for being such a terrible person is to have no contact with his children ever again, and he was never going to be allowed to ever meet me. And I never met my father my entire life.
There were times where he tried to reach out, and my mom never let him because she didn't want me sullied by having known him.
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Chapter 3: What role did family dynamics play in Cristela's life?
I think it's so necessary to talk about it, though, because I realize that people need to know that despite how I grew up, that I was able to go to school. I was able to be a great student. I kind of wanted to show people that the narrative that is presented about someone like me or like my family is wasn't true for everybody.
A lot of times, if you're not familiar with the Latino community, or namely like Mexican Americans or anything, when I moved to college, I went to college in St. Louis for a year when I first moved. And it was the first time that I realized I was a minority. And it wasn't until I moved away from my Mexican little border town that I realized that
People were going to treat me the way that they thought I should be treated based on their assumptions on who I am. Meaning that if they were unfamiliar with me, they would ask me a lot of tropey, stereotypical, offensive questions that I would have to answer because they wanted to get to know me.
What kind of questions?
They wanted to know how I was smart.
How could that be possible?
Yeah. People thought I was lying about how poor I grew up because I spoke so well.
Let me stop you for a second. Is that because you watched so much TV when you were a kid? You had to stay home. TV was your friend. Music was your friend. You learned a lot about America from TV. Is that where you learned like this perfect English, no accent kind of sound?
My mom had this rule. My mom was a Spanish speaker, never spoke English. She had a rule at home. We couldn't speak English at home. We had to speak Spanish so that she knew she could understand everything that was being said in the house. Having said that, when I was a kid, I loved TV so much, I started imitating what I heard on TV. The voices, the accents. That's how I learned English.
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Chapter 4: How did Cristela transition from theater to stand-up comedy?
My teacher, Mr. Honnell, had this exercise. It's very chorus line. He's like, I want everybody to pick an appliance. And that they're going to act out. They're going to pretend to be. And then when I say go, you're going to act out that appliance, make the noise of it, blah, blah, blah. And he said that and I didn't do anything because I thought it was so ridiculous.
And then he came over to me and he's like, why aren't you doing it? And I'm like, I am. I'm a vacuum cleaner and I'm broken. And literally the next day, I get called in to the office, the principal's office. And the principal tells me that my drama teacher, Mr. Honnell, has changed my schedule to put me into this advanced theater class. I had no idea what that was.
Got so upset, went to him, went to his room, got so upset because my best friend and I were going to have different lunch periods. And that made me furious. He was like, you need to do this. He's like, you have to do this. I need you to do this. Yes, it was.
I mean, you were basically doing nothing. You were refusing to do his assignment. And you found out a great cover story for that, a great disguise for that. And he thinks that you should be doing more theater as a result.
And we're still friends. Wow. He actually went to the taping of my first special. You are lucky. Yeah. I am very grateful for... The teachers, my drama teachers, I am very grateful for. I am I still I'm still friends with them. I've always said it's like without Mr. Honnell, I don't know what I would have done.
So did you want to be in music theater?
Yes. Oh, my God. Yes. I wanted it so much. Couldn't afford dance classes. Couldn't afford singing lessons. So I took it upon myself to just record movies that I could get off the TV on my VCR. I'd learn their dances themselves. Then when I got to high school and I started auditioning for college, they were like, oh, you can sing. And I was like, I can? I had no idea.
And yes, I wanted to be on Broadway.
But you ended up in stand-up comedy. How did that happen?
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Chapter 5: What impact did Cristela's mother's immigration status have on her childhood?
I already raised children. I helped my sister raise her three kids, like three kids from like babies to adults. And let me tell you, man, once you raise a child one time, you never want to do it again. They're terrible. They don't tell you that. They're terrible. I feel bad for parents. God, you get tricked. Because when people say they want kids, they usually mean I want a baby.
No one ever says, I want a 17-year-old.
That's really funny. How were you able to exit that life and return to the life you were trying desperately to build for yourself?
It sounds terrible to say this, but I feel that my mom dying was so liberating to me. Because my mom had chosen me to be her caregiver when I was a little kid. She told me that when she got older, I was going to be the one to take care of her. And I took that on because she had done so much for me. She sacrificed so much for my family. How could I not do that? do what she wanted me to do.
So when she passed away, I thought, wow, I can finally chase my dream. If I don't do it now, I'm never going to do it. And that's what I decided to do.
So eventually you started doing comedy shows. Yes. You did college tours, doing comedy at colleges around the country. And you eventually had enough money that you could buy things. Yes. You were amazed you would be able to see, like, doctors.
Yes.
I had no idea how doctors worked. I really didn't. I had no idea. Yes. I had no idea.
And let me tell you, I grew up in the kind of family where it's not the kind of conversation I had with my sister. My sister and I wouldn't talk about that. We were raised so conservative that we never talked about like OBGYNs. She had three children. It's like I almost didn't know how she had them. It's like that thing where we just didn't talk about it. Medical attention.
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Chapter 6: How did Cristela become involved in activism for immigrant rights?
You're supposed to try. You're supposed to try to fix it, you know?
Well, Christella, it's really been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it. My interview with Christella Alonzo was recorded in September after the release of her latest Netflix comedy special called Upper Classy. Alonzo will be traveling the country with her midlife mixtape tour starting in January.
We'll continue our end-of-the-year retrospective tomorrow with Tanya's interview with Malala Yousafzai. She became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner when she was 17 years old. In her new memoir, Finding My Way, she shares the vulnerable story of a young woman navigating friendship, first love, and self-discovery while living in the global spotlight. I hope you'll join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with engineering today from Adam Staniszewski. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Anna Bauman, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock is our director. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Brown.
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