The internet erupted late Tuesday night after a reported claimed Mark Wahlberg’s “All the Money in the World” female costar made one percent what he did for reshoots.
The reshoots came after Kevin Spacey was booted following rampant sexual misconduct allegations. He was ultimately replaced by Christopher Plummer. Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million for the reshoots, and while the female lead, Michelle Williams, was paid less than $1,000, according to USA Today. Both are represented by agents at William Morris Endeavor.
Predictably, it didn’t take long for Twitter to freak out.
Cool that WME negotiated $1.5 million for Mark Wahlberg but only $80/day for Michelle Williams https://t.co/RNpYqsPzvB
— Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) January 10, 2018
On the day after display of female power at the #goldenglobes, I learned that there was an egregious pay gap between Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg for the All the Money in the World reshoot. Did they think this wouldn’t come out? Unacceptable #TimesUp
— Melissa Silverstein (@melsil) January 9, 2018
Re: this quote from Michelle Williams. Women and people of color and queer people are conditioned to play nice and work for the collective good over and over again. And then it’s their fault when it turns out they were swindled.
— Tyler Coates (@tylercoates) January 10, 2018
Mark Wahlberg doesn’t have even 1% of Michelle Williams’ acting ability
— Jon (@prasejeebus) January 10, 2018
According to Sony itself, Michelle Williams is the film’s lead actress; Mark Wahlberg is a supporting actor. And the same agency, William Morris, represents both of them. Not good.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) January 10, 2018
This is so messed up that it is almost hard to believe. Almost. This is how this business works. I wonder if the studio or Wahlberg will do something to make the situation less insane. https://t.co/RsunBlOeCk
— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) January 10, 2018
Shameful indeed. And this is a movie about how greedy and heartless men can be! https://t.co/aRTi2tqWGG
— billy eichner (@billyeichner) January 10, 2018
Please go see Michelle’s performance in All The Money in The World. She’s a brilliant Oscar nominated Golden Globe winning actress. She has been in the industry for 20 yrs. She deserves more than 1% of her male costar’ s salary. https://t.co/HIniew6lf7
— Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) January 10, 2018
Call me crazy, but I really don’t understand any of the outrage here. Williams even previously told USA Today, “I said I’d be wherever they needed me, whenever they needed me. And they could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted. Because I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort.”
So, we’re now supposed to be upset because Wahlberg’s agent was able to squeeze out an extra $1.5 mil for his boy, but Williams threw away all her leverage from the beginning and was effectively paid in ham sandwiches? Doesn’t seem fair to me.
Williams had leverage. She could have refused to do reshoots unless Sony paid her a ton of money like they did Wahlberg, and they almost certainly would have. This literally has nothing to do with sexism. This whole situation is about one actor’s agents scoring him a major paycheck and one actress openly admitting she didn’t care about the money.
Of course, the internet doesn’t care about facts. They only want to spin up the outrage machine. Don’t blame anybody for the pay disparity here other than Williams and her representatives. It’s not a bad thing that Wahlberg wanted to get paid.