Tia and her twin Tamera Mowry starred in Sister, Sister from 1994-1999, and she recalls they were underpaid compared to other stars who were not of color.
“It was always so hard for my sister and I to get what we felt like we deserved and our paycheck never equaled our counterparts’ that weren’t of diversity,” she says in her web series, Tia Mowrys Quick Fix.
“It was very evident to me when I would walk on sets and see how certain stars or actors would be treated who weren’t of ethnicity — better dressing room, better trailer,” she adds. “It was so clear how you would see one show that didn’t have a diverse cast that just had a bigger budget so everything just seemed bigger and better.”
Tia says the discrimination she endured made her work harder.
“How I was treated is why I built my work ethic,” she says. “I am gonna get to a place where you can’t treat me like that.”
Tia’s hard work was rewarded in August with a three-movie deal to star in and produce holiday films for Lifetime airing in 2021. She previously starred on Lifetime in the 2019 film, A Very Vintage Christmas, and My Christmas Inn in 2018.
By Ken Simmons
Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
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Leon Bennett/Getty Images for ESSENCETia Mowry has been acting steadily for 30 years since she was a child, and now at age 42, she says being the victim of pay discrimination early in her career motivated her success.
