The formerly homeless actress revealed her spending habits, including living off of $500 per month early in her career, when she began booking roles on Tyler Perry’s “If Loving You Is Wrong” and “The Carmichael Show,” where she “started making a little bit of money” from acting. “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 in a Cosmopolitan cover story. “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.” The “Card Counter” star added, “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.”
The “Haunted Mansion” actress’ dedication to her home paid off: “Now I have a surplus of money,” Haddish dished, “but I’m still afraid of being poor again. Every movie I made, I would just buy another piece of land or a house.” The 2017 smash hit “Girls Trip” solidified Haddish as a breakout star, shining opposite Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Regina Hall in the buddy comedy. Haddish shared in 2020 that she was only paid $80,000 for the film, which grossed more than $140 million on a reported $20 million budget. With talks of a “Girls Trip” sequel back in 2020, Haddish told The Huffington Post that production stalled because an executive said, “‘Oh, you guys want too much money’” to come back. Haddish previously told IndieWire in 2021 that she spoke with her “Girls Trip” co-stars about making their own film on their terms. “I’ve been reading these books about economics and all this stuff, and I’m like, we should build our own,” Haddish said. “So we were writing this thing, coming up with all these ideas, and then everybody got busy again! But I have a really great outline, but I don’t know it might happen. I heard from [producer] Will Packer not too long ago, so we’ll see. I don’t know. I wish. And if it’s not ‘Girls Trip,’ we’ll make our own.” As for finances, Haddish revealed, “I got this broke girl mentality, this ‘I don’t never want to be homeless’ mentality. I started thinking like, ‘Well, okay, I’ve got goals I want to accomplish, and those goals are not always necessarily about money, except for, well, one of them is. I want to be on that Forbes Magazine for that highest-paid actresses list. I want to be on that list.”
One year later, Haddish has now clarified her career outlook. “It’s not about money. It’s about the power and then being able to create opportunities,” Haddish explained to Cosmo. “Like, on my show that I’m on right now, ‘The Afterparty,’ I put in a request to see more people like me on the set.” And her goal is also involving gender equity, including for set perks. “I met Robert De Niro at the Laugh Factory in the lobby and he was talking about how in his contracts, it says that everything he wears, he has the option to keep,” Haddish said. “At first, nobody wanted to dress me or lend me anything to wear. So I had to buy stuff. Then it got to the point where people are lending me stuff, but then I want to keep it because I like it and I want to wear it again!” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
