Earlier this month, HBO programming president Casey Bloys talked to The Hollywood Reporter about his attempt to address the problem of pay disparity between men and women working at the network. “We’ve proactively gone through all of our shows,” he said. “n fact, we just finished our process where we went through and made sure that there were no inappropriate disparities in pay; and where there were, if we found any, we corrected it going forward. And that’s is a direct result of the Times Up movement.”
It’s in that context that we’ve heard reports about two of the biggest stars of Westworld — Evan Rachel Wood (Dolores Abernathy) and Thandie Newton (Maeve Millay) — getting bumps in their paychecks…eventually. The show is about to kick off its second season, but Wood told The Wrap that she’ll be making money on par with her male costars come season 3. “I was just told that, you know, ‘Hey you’re, you’re getting equal pay.’ And I was like . And I almost got emotional. I was like, ‘I have never been paid the same as my male counterparts … Never, never.”
That’s surprising to hear, since Dolores is probably the closest thing Westworld has to a main character. Then again, in the first season, she was acting alongside heavyweights like Anthony Hopkins (Dr. Robert Ford) and Ed Harris (the Man in Black), who commanded fatter paychecks thanks to their reputations and awards recognition. But as Bloys said to THR, “when you get into season two or three of a show and the show is a success, it is much harder to justify paying people wildly disparate numbers, and that’s where you have to make sure that you’re looking at the numbers — that they don’t end up just on the path they were on from the pilot stage.”
Meanwhile, co-star Thandie Newton revealed to Vanity Fair that she’ll also be getting equal pay come season 3. “ all happening right now, and yeah, we’re all equal across the board. It’s really exciting. It’s unprecedented. It’s—goodness; it shatters so much calcified pain, resentment, frustration. It just shatters it.”
Newton is so excited by HBO’s commitment to equal pay that she’s even started to turn down projects that don’t have it built in. “I wouldn’t do anything if it didn’t. Definitely not. Fuck that. It literally sets a precedent, and leading the way, which is amazing.”
Over on Game of Thrones, HBO’s other wildly expensive sci-fi/fantasy show, things among the “A-tier” actors have been equal for awhile. Reportedly, Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau have made the same amount per episode since the start of season 7: $1.1 million.
Next: Five reasons why Game of Thrones fans will love Westworld
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