Today in Burn It All Down News, USA Today is reporting that for the eleventh-hour All the Money in the World reshoots, Mark Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million, while Michelle Williams was paid less than one thousand dollars. Yes, that’s right, Michelle Williams, who received a Golden Globe nomination for her work in the film, made LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of what Mark Wahlberg, who received no recognition, got for the same damn effort. I’ll wait while you scream into a pillow forever.

About the last minute reshoots to replace Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer, Williams previously said that “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 basically, she agreed to work for the bare minimum (an $80 per diem) because she believed in Scott’s effort to recast the film and not, by association, celebrate Spacey. But not Marky Mark! Wahlberg leveraged the situation to the hilt and walked away with a seven figure paycheck. And then to cap it off, Williams’ team was not alerted to his payday. 

WHY. Why wasn’t her team told. They have the same agency! This is not the first trans-Atlantic phone call, it’s literally talking to the people IN THE SAME BUILDING. All these pay disparity stories have a common theme, and that is that the woman never knows what the f*ck is going on with her male co-star’s salary. Money, salary, these can be touchy topics, and a lot of people don’t like to talk about it out of some sense that it’s rude. F*CK THAT. Making LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of your male peer is what’s f*cking rude. And maybe she didn’t want to profit from, for lack of a better expression, righting a wrong. That’s nice, but Michelle Williams could be a goddamn saint and still deserve to be paid equally to her male co-star.  

The call to action here is probably going to fall entirely on women. Actresses will be expected to challenge producers and studios for more money, even though doing so will probably get them labeled a bitches. Well f*ck that. And f*ck right off with expecting the burden to fall entirely on actresses. The Golden Globes red carpet exposed how much of the burden, emotional and work-wise, is falling on women as Time’s Up takes over, and just how f*cking little is expected of men—show up in the black tux you were going to wear anyway, and wear this pin. Ants do more work than that. 

Here, now, is an arena where men can do some f*cking work, and make a real contribution. Stop cutting out the women you work with, make sure that her team is talking to yours. If not in a coordinated bargaining agreement, then at least to ensure both sides know the score and work toward an equitable goal. And guys, if you’re afraid of making less because a woman is asking for more, realize that is bullsh*t and not a good excuse for taking advantage of an unfair system. And realize that is the reality women already live in.
 

Here's Michelle at the 2018 Bafta Tea party and at LAX yesterday.