Were 90’s starlets Tia and Tamera Mowry underpaid during the height of their teen success story due to racial discrimination? Apparently so.
This week while talking to PEOPLE to promote the new episode of Tia Mowry’s Quick Fix web series, Mowry-Hardrict opened up about the disparities in both treatment and compensation that she and her sister experienced as children between them and their “counterparts that weren’t of diversity.”
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“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,” Mowry-Hardrict recalled.
“Now I’m like, more aware what that was, which is a budget, but back then I didn’t know what a budget was. 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. But when it came to my projects and what I was doing, you actually really visually saw the less-than.”
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The 42-year-old actress who is now a mother of two also touched on how underpaid the siblings were during their successful stint on the iconic sitcom Sister, Sister despite being the stars of the show.
“I remember once the show became a hit, it’s very normal for you to ask for a raise. That’s what happens, right? People get raises,” she said. “But 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 claimed, “and that was frustrating. Very, very frustrating.”
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