“Grey’s Anatomy” star Ellen Pompeo made waves last month when she publicized her hefty salary bump, a move she now says was to encourage more women to ask for higher pay themselves.
In a Thursday appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Pompeo explained her decision to go public with her $20 million payday in a Hollywood Reporter cover story, saying that it’s on women to ask for what they’re worth.
“People are blaming people,” the actress said. “There’s a lot of finger-pointing, but there’s less people owning up to their side of things. I wanted to do a truthful interview and talk about my road to my own empowerment … and mistakes I’ve made along the way.”
what’s done to us or what’s not given to us. It’s what don’t we ask for,” the she said. “As much as we can point the finger at other people and [say], ‘You don’t give us or you don’t treat us fairly,’ we also have to point the finger at ourselves and say, ‘Did we ask? Did we step up and have the gumption to ask for what a man would?’ We have to own part of it.”
Pompeo recently renewed her contract on the ABC medical drama through Seasons 15 and 16, setting a record as the highest-paid dramatic actress on TV with a $20 million salary.
She now earns $575,000 per episode, a seven-figure bonus, back-end points on “Grey’s,” a producing credit and an executive producing credit for spinoff “Station 19.” All of that, she said, were her demands to continue with the hit show following Patrick Dempsey’s departure and creator Shonda Rhimes’ move to Netflix.
“Sometimes we’re too shy,” she told Kimmel. “We’re too afraid to be seen as difficult — to really speak our mind.”
7 Actresses Who've Demanded Equal Pay, From Emma Stone to Viola Davis (Photos)
After Patricia Arquette's Oscar acceptance speech and Jennifer Lawrence's Lenny essay last year, more and more actresses have spoken out about pay inequality.
Patricia Arquette
Arquette delivered a moving speech about pay inequality during her 2015 Oscar acceptance speech for her role in "Boyhood," but she didn't stop there. In August 2016, she told TheWrap, "Look, inequality is in 98 percent of all industries, so I’m not surprised it’s still in Hollywood. That’s just part and parcel with what’s happening across the nation."
However, she is seeing some progress: "A lot of studios are actually really making it a priority. There’s incremental changes as far as Hollywood goes."
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Hilary Swank
In October 2016, Swank told Chelsea Handler on "Chelsea" that "Boys Don't Cry" didn't pay enough to cover her health insurance. Then she revealed that she earned only 5 percent of what one of her male counterparts earned on another movie.
"But the male hadn't had any kind of critical success, but had been in a movie where he was 'hot,"' she said. "And he got offered $10 million, and I got offered $500,000."
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Emma Stone
The "La La Land" actress told Vogue in November 2016, “We should all be treated fairly and paid fairly. I’ve been lucky enough to have equal pay to my male costars. Not ‘lucky.’ I’ve had pay equal to my male costars in the past few films. But our industry ebbs and flows in a way that’s like, ‘How much are you bringing into the box office?’"
“What are we at [nationally]? Seventy-nine cents to the dollar?” Stone continued. “It’s insane. There’s no excuse for it anymore.”
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Michelle Rodriguez
In May 2016, Rodriguez invoked the S word in discussing Hollywood's gender pay gap. "It’s like being born a slave. You know it’s like, ‘Oh, damn. Darn my luck. I wish I was born somewhere else or maybe some other way,'” the actress said. “But it is what it is.”
Robin Wright
The "House of Cards" star demanded to be paid the same as co-star Kevin Spacey and threatened to go "public" if Netflix didn't cough up the dough. "I was like, ‘I want to be paid the same as Kevin,'” Wright told media at the Rockefeller Foundation earlier this year. "There are very few films or TV shows where the male, the patriarch, and the matriarch are equal. And they are in ‘House of Cards.'”
She added, "I was like, ‘You better pay me or I’m going to go public,'” Wright said. “And they did.”
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Viola Davis
In February 2016, the "How to Get Away With Murder" actress told Mashable, "I believe in equal pay, first of all. I’m sorry, if a woman does the same job as a man, she should be paid the same amount of money. She just should. That’s just the way the world should work. What are you telling your daughter when she grows up? ‘You've got to just understand that you’re a girl. You have a vagina, so that’s not as valuable.’ What are you telling her?"
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Emmy Rossum
The star of "Shameless" nearly scuttled Showtime's plans for an eighth season when she demanded to be paid the same as series co-star William H. Macy, who plays her father on the show (a move that Macy supported). The gambit worked: She wound up getting a new deal.
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Many stars rallied against gender pay gap in Hollywood — and “Shameless” star Emmy Rossum actually won
After Patricia Arquette's Oscar acceptance speech and Jennifer Lawrence's Lenny essay last year, more and more actresses have spoken out about pay inequality.
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