Olivia Colman is getting candid about pay disparity in Hollywood, saying she would make a “fuck of a lot more” if she were a male actor.
The actress-producer opened up about the inequalities in wages that she has experienced in the film and television industry during a recent appearance on CNN’s The Amanpour Hour.
“Don’t get me started on the pay disparity, but male actors get paid more because they used to say they drew in the audiences,” The Crown actress said. “And actually, that hasn’t been true for decades but they still like to use that as a reason to not pay women as much as their male counterparts.”
Host Christiane Amanpour proceeded to ask Colman if she has faced pay disparity herself, despite being an Oscar-winning actress who has starred in dozens of popular projects, including The Favourite, Hearstopper, The Father and The Lost Daughter.
“I’m very aware that if I was Oliver Colman, I’d be earning a fuck of a lot more than I am,” she said in response. “I know of one pay disparity, which is a 12,000 percent difference.”
Colman’s comments come months after Taraji P. Henson opened up in The Hollywood Reporter‘s Color Purple December cover story about feeling stuck within the same lowball offers despite having a successful career in the industry.
“I’ve been getting paid and I’ve been fighting tooth and nail every project to get that same freaking [fee] quote,” she said at the time. “And it’s a slap in the face when people go, ‘Oh girl, you work all the time. You always working.’ Well, goddammit, I have to. It’s not because I wish I could do two movies a year and that’s that. I have to work because the math ain’t mathing. And I have bills.”
Henson continued, “I’ve been doing this for two decades and sometimes I get tired of fighting because I know what I do is bigger than me. I know that the legacy I leave will affect somebody coming up behind me. My prayer is that I don’t want these Black girls to have the same fights that me and Viola [Davis], Octavia [Spencer], we out here thugging it out. Otherwise, why am I doing this? For my own vanity? There’s no blessing in that. I’ve tried twice to walk away [from the business]. But I can’t, because if I do, how does that help the ones coming up behind me?”