For comedian Cristela Alonzo, the last decade has taught her a little something about timing and the power of a joke.

On Sept. 23, the stand-up, actress and first Latina to create, write and star in her own U.S. sitcom released Upper Classy, her latest Netflix special. It debuted amid a firestorm around Jimmy Kimmel, whose late-night talk series Jimmy Kimmel Live! had been taken off the air — and reinstated a day before her special released — by ABC Television Network (home to her series Cristela) and parent company Disney, following a dispute involving the FCC, Nextstar and Sinclair.

The incident, which quickly dovetailed into a larger conversation about government and Hollywood censorship, was seemingly par for the course for Alonzo and her specials. While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the final chapter in her own take on class ascension in America, the comedian revealed how her two previous specials and her own relationship to comedy had also been shaped — literally — by the political landscape, including President Trump’s 2016 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“My birthday is Jan. 6, and during my second special, I was going to shoot right around my birthday, so I rescheduled it to February. Then I got COVID, and I’m like, this man really has it out for me,” she recalls. “When he won the first time, I fell into such a deep depression that I stopped doing stand-up for about a year and a half. I didn’t want to be funny. I thought there was nothing to be funny about.”

The experience of the last 10 years of American politics had left Alonzo at one point questioning the role of comedy. “Sometimes I have moments where I’m like, ‘Can people laugh? Should people laugh?’” she says. But that questioning has also opened her up to new ways to use her platform, and turning her work and art into a mechanism for tangibly showing up for people, communities and cultures.

That’s included using comedy to support the legal representation of immigrants detained by ICE, with Alonzo raising tens of thousands for the nonprofit Immigrant Defenders Law Center through a series of “Room Temperature” shows. For the comedian, who points to Black women as the harbingers and leaders “about politics, about this country” while discussing her work, it’s also about recognizing how growing up with an immigrant mother in a Texas border town fueled her own success, as well as the power and necessity of speaking up.

“We all have to do what is needed when it is needed. If you don’t, then you cannot chime in later with your opinion once the destruction has happened,” she says. “If you’re not going to do it as you see the volcano erupt, you can’t be like, ‘Whoa, that was disastrous!’ Did you warn people that it was erupting?”

Below, Alonzo discusses her creative, personal and political journey with comedy specials Lower Classy, Middle Classy, and Upper Classy; what Kimmel’s experience says about censorship in Hollywood; why she has no fear about speaking out and how she’s using her comedy as a blueprint for advocacy.

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You filmed your first special and released it during Trump’s first administration. Now you’re back with Upper Classy, and he’s back in the White House. Did you imagine that, and how did he and this last decade of politics shape your specials?

During the first election, I was on a boat with [feminist activist, Presidential Medal of Honor winner, and co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association] Dolores Huerta, and I didn’t realize I was going to take it so strongly. I started crying, and Dolores said, “I get it. It’s the first time your country’s broken your heart. It’s not going to be the last time. This is what you do. You go home and you cry, you get angry, and then the next day you wake up and you keep fighting. And every time you feel like giving up, wondering why it’s happening, you remember every time you cried and got angry, and you let that fuel you.”

When he won the first time, I fell into such a deep depression that I stopped doing stand-up for about a year and a half. I thought there was nothing to be funny about. I really wanted to be there more for my people and try showing up for the community, and not just Latinos. During the first administration, right away, we had the Muslim Ban, and growing up in a border town, I know what it’s like to be part of a group that other people see as a problem. I never forgot it.

My birthday is Jan. 6, and during my second special, I was going to shoot right around my birthday, so I rescheduled it to February. Then I got COVID, and I’m like, “This man really has it out for me. “This third one, I thought, “We went through it one time. We’ve learned our lesson. What are we doing?” And the moment I had the special date picked, which was June 14, it was No Kings Day — the day he decided to throw his Chuck E. Cheese military birthday parade. I’m just like, this is tiring, you know? (Laughs.)

Sometimes I have moments where I’m like, “Can people laugh? Should people laugh?” We also live at a time where, with social media, so many people get angry if you’re not vocal about certain issues. What are you doing? Where do you stand? You want to know the support and money you spend on someone or on a corporation is supporting you, and that they see you as people. What a weird time to have to take stock of things around you and ask, “Does this person see me as a human being?”

Upper Classy is the third and final installment in a trilogy, including Lower Classy and Middle Classy. What inspired your specific look at class, identity and mobility in America?

When I did the first special, I really wanted to do a trilogy, but it was kind of on a whim. I love Back to the Future, and I thought what a great trilogy — beginning, middle, and end. That’s how I started thinking about the Classy specials. When I had my TV show, the notes I would get from the network and studio were “more ascension.” I knew what they meant. They wanted me and my family to have money in the show, but it’s like, no, I don’t come from money, and isn’t the interesting story a family banding together, improving the state of their lives and seeing a difference as we go on this journey, instead of immediately being the Huxtables? We’ve already seen a lot of [financially] successful families on TV. The family that I come from isn’t that. So I started thinking, what about a special about ascension?

First, I did Lower Classy, and then when I had the second one, Middle Classy, I started thinking, “Oh, shit, my life is completely different from the first one to the second one.” I started going to the doctor, and health care is a luxury for so many people, so I was thinking, what if we bastardize class? What does class mean to everybody? Sometimes being classy means buying a Chanel bag, having an expensive car, but that doesn’t mean anything to me. Class to me is being able to have health insurance, finding out that I’m diabetic, and being able to have money for medication. That is the story of so many people. It’s being able to pay pharmaceutical prices in the United States without having to worry about how you’re going to do it.

Then, in this last one, once I took stock of where I was, I realized you get to the point where you don’t live in survival mode anymore, and now you allow yourself to try and actually live a life. And by that I mean trying to enjoy your life a little bit more — that’s hard. So many of us are told that you have to work first, and then, when you retire, you can have fun. But it’s like, “Really, when my back hurts the most?” We live in such a culture where work is supposed to be the most important thing in your life, that now we live in a time where you can’t even have hobbies. They want you to have your hobbies as your side hustle. So, when do you just enjoy anything? I can’t just ride a bike. I have to Door Dash.

Your three specials also traced the time before the pandemic, during it, and now. You touch on it in your specials, as well as how your relationship to life and work shifted in Upper Classy. How did it impact you and your special content?

The lockdown was actually the moment that made me realize we plan for things that can be taken away in a heartbeat. It was a perfect example of how we have this trajectory that we are taught — you go to high school, graduate; go to college and you have a job; and if you’re lucky, you get benefits. You might hate the job, but you can afford to go to the doctor with this job that you hate, and then you marry and you have kids and then live your life. But even at an early age, I was like, “What if I don’t want that? What if I don’t want the corporate job? What if I’m not looking for Mr. Right, and having children?” Then you realize you can actually do whatever the hell you want to do in this life. You can choose your own happiness. Because the people who are telling you those things they’re not living your life. You are.

Page Hurwitz, who worked on Netflix’s Outstanding show and doc, and who has worked on The Rosie Show and Last Comic Standing, along with specials for Michelle Buteau, Wanda Sykes, Ms. Pat, and Fortune Feimster, directed this and Middle Classy, but not your first special. How did you get connected, and why did she feel like the right director to end this trilogy’s journey with?

Page is one of my closest friends. When I did the first special, it didn’t even occur to me I could ask her directly. I got the production company and the deal, and everybody’s telling you the steps. After I did the first special, I was like, “Can I get my friend to direct [the second one]?” I met her maybe 15 years ago, and what I love about her is that she’s a director, but she is also a comic. It was helpful to have a comic direct the special because she could actually see it in a way maybe not all directors can see it. I always believe that regardless of how well you do in life, you always need people around you who will tell you when something’s not good or can be better. She is that person, and you cannot live a life and get to a point in your career where you think you know exactly what you’re doing and that you’re just so talented and so everything, because then you end up like Kanye.

I went to the Netflix Emmy party [a few weeks] ago. I hate these. I hate public settings. I’m thinking worst-case scenarios. Page is like, “Cristela, you have to go.” I know I’m uncomfortable being there. But she knows me well enough to know that I can handle it and that it’s something I should do. I got diagnosed with severe social anxiety and severe depression, and it’s one of those things like, once you have a name for it, it is so satisfying. But it is also so good to have people like [Page] around you that remind you that you can and should do it, because it’s really easy to say no and stop yourself.

The power of naming is talked about a lot within spaces like the disability and queer communities, as going beyond giving other people a label for you, and into giving you a sense of understanding and control over experiences, situations and feelings that you didn’t have before. That can be empowering.

There’s a video I reposted on Instagram the other day. This host is asking a guest who is trans, “Are you happy?” And the guest says, “Yes, I am very happy.” And the person next to them starts saying, “Well —” and the host is like, “Shut it.” How simple. It’s just about, does that make you happy? Does who you are make you happy? In this life, achieving happiness or any kind of freedom is so hard for so many people. Why would you ever deny anybody the chance of having and feeling some kind of joy? Some people feel like they have to give their opinion, and it’s like, why are you ruining somebody’s happiness? Just let them figure out who they are, and let them go with that.

In the special, you address the realizations of class mobility, as well as how people find moments of joy even with little money. You also discuss your brother’s citizenship journey, and share your mutual pride over that while noting he said it took America a long time to figure out that he belonged here, too. You’re discussing the dualities of growing up poor and being an immigrant in America, the ways the U.S. can spend as much time creating a society that includes people as one that excludes people. How do you see the promises and disappointments of class and immigration structures in the U.S. intersecting?

It’s a weird thing I don’t think that we talk about it enough. My family’s from Mexico, and there is a caste system that exists, or that existed, that was really obvious growing up on TV. In the soap operas, the lighter-skinned people had all the power. They were the engineers, architects, lawyers. The people who looked Indigenous were the uneducated characters, the cartoon characters. Something we don’t talk about a lot in this country is that the caste system exists here as well. It’s this idea that if you grew up poor, then people are surprised that you can speak well. For some reason, because of the lack of money, they don’t think or like that I had access to the same alphabet that they did. I can go to the same schools as all of them, but for some reason, because of my economic status, they’re surprised that I know certain things.

The hypocrisy that exists in this country for certain communities would be laughable if it weren’t so painful. Especially regarding immigration. Everybody says we just want people to come the right way. OK, well, ICE is detaining people at courthouses. These people are going through all the processes. They’re doing all of these things they’re supposed to do. They’re doing it the right way, yet somehow they’re being detained. The argument was that this man in office was going to take care of the criminals, but the truth is that ICE doesn’t want to go after the criminals because they’re scared of them, so they go after the people that they can control. They are going after the people who want to be here so bad and go through the right channels that they can detain them at courthouses, in check-ins that they have been doing for years. Yet are now, all of a sudden, like, it’s time for you to go home.

Don’t say things that make you feel good about yourself when we all see that the actions you’re carrying out say otherwise. With the Jimmy Kimmel suspension and talk about free speech, all of that shows the hypocrisy. Free speech is not free if we have to decide is it free or is it rented speech; if I have to pay you to say the things that I want to say. We have the First Amendment. We should be able to say anything. We cannot have the government control what we’re saying. We have to decide what kind of country are we. What do we represent? Are we the people that believe in the poem that’s on the Statue of Liberty — would you give me your poor, your tired? Or are we the people who want to charge $100,000 on HB-1 visas?

Comedians are often talked about as primary defenders of free speech, but in the discussion around Kimmel, it seems some people don’t understand what free speech protects, while others mix things like censorship up with concepts like cancellation. How is what happened with Kimmel different from cancellation to you, and what role do comedians play in shaping everyone’s understanding of the difference between these things?

It’s really weird to see an uprising of podcasters who say that they’re comics and just throw out buzzwords. There was big talk about cancel culture, and I just want the freedom to say this. “Now I can say the R-word, and that makes me feel good for some reason.” I have been looking for them to be on the record [Kimmel’s suspension], and for some reason, they’re quiet. So we pick and choose when we want to be vocal about and what we want to say. I think there’s also a disservice that some comics have done. They know better, but they don’t say that words are important. They make it seem like words are just words. They’re just jokes, they’re just this, they’re just that. Words have power. Every word in an instruction manual is just a word, but put it together, and those words tell you how to use this thing. So let’s not pretend that words don’t have power.

I believe in being able to criticize anyone. I’m a liberal, and if the people opposite me could actually write a good joke about why I’m the problem to them, I would respect that. Because you also want to be able to laugh at yourself, right? But there is this punching down on communities. There is no reason why certain communities are easy targets for jokes. Those are the communities that show how lazy you are in writing jokes. It’s a weird time to be a comedian right now, but I’ll also tell you that I have no fear. I don’t worry about anything that I’m saying. Everything that I say, I will defend to the ends of all time because it’s who I am. It’s weird that some of the people who are so into the First Amendment and so into freedom and screw cancel culture were pretty quiet.

What happened to Kimmel was shocking to many, but censorship issues are not new to the country. Hollywood has a known history of it — from the blacklist to the Hayes Code. But for you, did this feel like new territory? Does this feel like the industry that you’ve been working in?

It seems familiar in regard to it being a business, and when there’s business involved, people will always go after the money. That is not unfamiliar. During the 2016 election, there was a network that wanted to try to create programming that catered to the demographic that won the election because they thought that that’s what America wanted. It’s the choices that always come in, trying to placate the masses, or what they think are the masses, because they confuse mass for volume. If you’re loud, they think it’s almost like a map, where an inch represents 10 miles and 5 million viewers. When I was growing up, I used to translate the news for my mom, so I was always a big current events news junkie. And even when I was a kid learning about elections, my question was, “Why is everybody so concerned about Iowa?” I’m asking genuine questions. Like what happened in Iowa?

You hosted Room Temperature, No Ice shows, and raised upwards of $50,000 to fund legal representation for those currently being detained by ICE. That’s an example of using your platform not just to talk but to walk, and through these shows, you’re inviting other people to walk with you. Can you talk about your decision to host them, what precedent or blueprint it sets for others in Hollywood in terms of how to take action, and the specific impact of this work beyond simple donations?

One of the reasons I wanted to do the ICE shows was that during every election cycle, I work with voter outreach and I love trying to get people to understand how important voting is. But everybody always says, “Well, it’s just one vote.” That’s the biggest argument I get. People don’t realize. There are so many examples of how important one vote is. When I started doing the shows, I was thinking about how I maintain a very low expense lifestyle on purpose. I always want to have the freedom to say no. In this business, one of the only powers you have is to say no. Having said that, I grew up in a border town in the 1980s in South Texas, where we had immigration raids, and my mom was undocumented. So when the ICE raids started in Los Angeles, I took it very personally. I’m 46 years old, and I was instantly taken back to being a little kid and having to protect my mom and make sure she was OK.

At 46, I can tell you that the trauma with that is so real that it never goes away. It just becomes dormant. I never though it was going to ever come back and flare up, but it did. So when I saw that, all the kids like me at that age, I started thinking, well, everybody knows that this is bullshit, right? Everybody knows this is wrong. Then you see people who weren’t saying anything, especially people who make money off the culture, monetize the culture, use the culture to pad their wallets, and then when it’s time to be loud, they stay silent. I couldn’t do that because if I did, it would have been a complete betrayal of my entire family and who I am. So for me, it was like, I don’t need the money, and I’m so upset at what’s happening that I’m going to do these shows. I’ll charge $30 a ticket. The people who can afford $30 are the people who need to have that moment. So instead of doing one big show, I will do six shows that people can come and see and feel like they’re actually helping.

With one $30 ticket added to other $30 tickets, we raised over $48,000 — just from people who wanted to contribute. And at every show, I told audiences, “You did that. Your $30 did that. Change is possible.” Then I got the nonprofit [Immigrant Defenders Law Center] to set up a table at the end of the show in the lobbies of the clubs, and I would do a meet and greet next to the table so that people could get literature about the nonprofit, and people could see the face of this nonprofit. Because sometimes when you give away money, you don’t see the people. You don’t see the humanity of it. We ended up raising another $12,000 just with donations because they wanted to give more. I know that there are so many people who have the kind of life that I grew up with, but also that it was possible for me because of the sacrifices that my mom made. Just like the people who are getting detained, and because of those sacrifices, I have been able to live this life that I never thought was possible.

Especially with immigrants, they are an easily vilified group when you don’t know any of them personally, whenever you don’t know any community personally. It is so easy to make them the bad guys, but once you give them a face and a heart, man, it is harder to hate them. Because now they have become human. I can’t tell these stories and I can’t talk about my life only to make a profit. I don’t want to be part of the problem. I don’t need people to like me. You have a problem with what I’m saying, unfollow me. Leave. Somebody else will replace you. You cannot succumb to trying to appeal to certain people, appease these people, because you’ll never be done. They’ll always want more. So it’s like, this is who I am. Are you with me? If you are, let’s go. If not, there are other people over there for you. Have at it.

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Upper Classy is now streaming on Netflix.