Jessica Chastain Helped Octavia Spencer Get Equal Pay
During the Sundance Film Festival last week, Octavia Spencer recalled a story about how Jessica Chastain helped her get five times her initial salary for an upcoming comedy produced by Chastain. They previously co-starred in The Help, where Spencer took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
When Chastain approached Spencer for the opportunity, the latter explained to her how Hollywood was paying black actresses less than white actresses. At the “Women Breaking Barriers” panel, Spencer was up to her tears when she told attendees what her co-star had told her: “Octavia, we’re gonna get you paid on this film.”
“She said, ‘You and I are gonna be tied together. We’re gonna be favored nations, and we’re gonna make the same thing, you are going to make that amount.’ Fast-forward to last week, we’re making five times what we asked for,” the Hidden Figures star continued.
Spencer was recently nominated by the Academy for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Shape of Water (she got the same nomination last year for Hidden Figures). She is the only black actress to receive a nomination after her win in 2011 for The Help. It's easy to assume that for someone with all of these achievements, she at least gets equal pay as other actresses. But that hasn't been the case for Spencer.
After her story about Chastain broke out, Jada Pinkett Smith joined the conversation on Twitter about the pay gap for women of color in Hollywood. “I can only hope that with all the beautiful alliances made as of late in the entertainment industry that women of color can lean on our courageous and compassionate white sisters to flow us their support and power to create more equality in this area as we move forward.” Previously, Smith also took it to Twitter when her co-star Tiffanny Haddish didn't receive a nomination for the Golden Globes. She was even more furious when she found out that the Hollywood Foreign Press failed to watch Girls Trip.
We have a feeling that these women will keep on breaking barriers.
Watch Spencer tell the story at 19:30 in the video below:
