'Cristela' Trailer Starring Cristela Alonzo
A new Latino family will be featured in ABC's new Friday night lineup starring Cristela Alonzo and Carlos Ponce. Watch a preview of the series here! ABC

Cristela Alonzo stars in the new ABC sitcom "Cristela" announced this week during the annual Upfront presentations in New York. The half hour comedy will air Friday's at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT following Tim Allen's "Last Mand Standing." "Cristela" follows the titled character in her sixth year of law school. Cristela (Cristela Alonzo) is finally on the brink of landing her first big (unpaid) internship at a prestigious law firm. The only problem is that her pursuit of success is more ambitious than her traditional Mexican-American family thinks is appropriate. She's stuck straddling the old culture she's trying to modernize at home with her working-class family and the modern world she's trying to embrace in her professional career. Breakout comedian Cristela Alonzo stars in this hilarious comedy about laughing your way down the path to the new American dream. Watch the trailer for "Cristela" down below!

"Cristela" also stars Carlos Ponce (Felix), Terri Hoyos (Natalia), Andrew Leeds (Josh) and Sam McMurray (Trent). The show was written by Cristela Alonzo and Kevin Hench and is executive produced by Kevin Hench, Marty Adelstein, Becky Clements and Shawn Levy with production by Twentieth Century Fox Television. The sitcom now has a home on the network that also brought us "The George Lopez Show" and "Ugly Betty" both with Latin characters as leads. Alonzo is a stand-up comic that has previously been featured on late night shows like "Conan," "Late late Show With Craig Ferguson" and also "Last Comic Standing" and "Gabriel Iglesias' Stand-Up Revolution." Cristela taped her first half hour special for Comedy Central in 2013 and record her first CD for Comedy Central which will be made available later this year.

The pilot was taped in April and the premise is loosely based on Cristela's life. In a blog post on her official website, the comic writes about how she struggle to get her original concept on air after many asked her to make changes. "I wasn’t going to change the voice of show. I had a story to tell. I couldn’t steer away from that story. People told me I was silly, naïve," she wrote. "What these people didn’t realize is that I was willing to say no and walk away from it if it ever got to that point." Cristela stood firm with her convictions and was involved in every step of the process. When she wrote the post she was not sure if ABC would order the pilot to series, but at the end of the shooting she was happy with the outcome. "I am proud of what we created," she wrote. "We created a show about a girl that lives with her average, American family and works in a world that is out of her comfort zone. It’s a true family show that kids can see with their parents. There isn’t a raunchy joke in it and it’s genuinely funny. I think it’s a show that the Latino community would be proud of. I’ve tried to honor the culture and give us a voice."

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