A new USA Today story released last night is reporting that Michelle Williams was less than $1000 to reshoot scenes for her Golden Globe-nominated performance in All the Money in the World while Mark Wahlberg received $1.5 million. And people are not pleased. Movie reshoots are not an uncommon practice and typically would not be a huge story, but in this case director Ridley Scott decided to remove Kevin Spacey from the film entirely and replace him with Christopher Plummer after sexual misconduct allegations surfaced about Spacey. This was all done incredibly quickly over Thanksgiving in order to make the film’s original release date.
Scott told USA Today in December that “The whole reshoot was — in normal terms was expensive but not as expensive as you think. Because all of them, everyone did it for nothing…No, they all came in free. Christopher had to get paid. But Michelle, no. Me, no.” (The crew, however, was paid.) Williams herself previously told the paper, “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.” But now reporters say that they discovered Wahlberg’s team actually negotiated a $1.5 million salary for the extra time on the job. Making it all the more complicated, the two actors are both represented by the same agency, WME.
Twitter—including Williams’ bestie Busy Phillips and Jessica Chastain—exploded with outrage on Williams’ behalf as soon as the story was published, calling out the pay gap but also that she was willing to do whatever it took to remove Spacey from the film while Wahlberg saw the moment as a cash grab. Talk about not reading the room, right?
https://twitter.com/mrDaveKrumholtz/status/950931112032980992
While Williams has not commented directly on this story, she has played an active role in the Time’s Up initiative and brought #MeToo founder Tarana Burke as her date to the Golden Globes. Wahlberg has also not commented, but public opinion does not seem to be on his side. Even if there are complicated contract technicalities that somehow make this more than a gender pay issue, it’s not a great look right now to be asking for more money when so many others were simply dedicated to getting an alleged serial abuser out of the film. Could a donation to Time’s Up be in his future?