Actress Michelle Williams took her time in the Emmy spotlight Sunday night to lecture the audience on “white privilege,” intersectionality, the so-called “wage gap,” and the plight of minority women in the entertainment industry.
The actress, who is a staple of the Hollywood progressive activism crowd, won her Best Actress award for portraying Gwen Verdon in the miniseries, “Fosse/Verdon,” about the relationship between the Broadway leading lady and the legendary stage choreographer, Bob Fosse.
In the spirit of Hollywood knowing what’s best for everyone else, Williams dedicated her award to all of the little people in Hollywood who aren’t landing multi-million dollar contracts for television projects, according to entertainment media.
“I see this as an acknowledgement of what is possible when a woman is trusted and feels safe enough to voice her needs and respected enough to be heard … my bosses never presumed to know better than I did about what I needed in order to do my job and honor Gwen Verdon,” she began.
“I want to thank FX and Fox Studios for supporting me completely and for paying me equally because they understood. They understood that when you put value into a person, it empowers that person to get in touch with their own inherent value. And where do they put that value?” Williams asked.
She continued, “And so the next time a woman, and especially a woman of color — because she stands to make 52 cents on the dollar compared to her white male counterpart — tells you what she needs in order to do her job, listen to her. Believe her.”
Williams is famous for her spat with costar Mark Wahlberg, who was paid more for his role in the film, “All the Money in the World,” a biopic about magnate J. Paul Getty, which was released into theaters last year. She reportedly made only $1,000 per day for a series of re-shoots, while Wahlberg commanded a whopping $1.5 million.
But like the so-called “gender wage gap” between men and women generally, Williams’ pay disparity comes with an explanation: her agent simply wasn’t as good as Wahlberg’s at negotiating a deal. The film originally starred an aged Kevin Spacey as the multi-millionaire Getty, but much of the film had to be reshot after Spacey, the subject of several #MeToo complaints by young men, was fired.
Williams, it seems, agreed to participate in several days of reshoots with veteran actor Christopher Plummer, who replaced Spacey in the film — and she agreed to participate in those reshoots largely for free, at least according to industry insiders. Walhberg did not.
After leaving the stage, Williams continued to lecture the Emmy audience and amassed members of the media on how difficult it is to be a highly paid celebrity entertainer. You see, that $1.5 million that she missed out on was the difference between saving for retirement and, presumably, having to rely on Social Security.
“No matter how many accolades I’d amassed, I couldn’t make that translate into retirement money,” she told a press conference backstage at the awards ceremony, adding that she continues having a difficult time “getting ahead.”
She then took it upon herself to admit that she is a “white woman of privilege,” but to add that if she doesn’t speak out for the downtrodden, who will?
“There really won’t be any satisfaction for me until the larger message is heard, and that’s what I wanted to point out tonight.” She then reiterated her talking points: “52 [cents] on the dollar is what a Hispanic woman will make compared to a male. The numbers aren’t out yet for Native women but they expect them to be worse.”
The gender wage gap has less to do with abject sexism than it does economic choices made by women — though there is, of course, some debate as to what drives those choices. Like Williams’ decision not to negotiate a separate deal for “All the Money in the World” reshoots, women often select lower-paying careers, take time out of the workforce to care for children, and put in fewer hours, resulting in a lower average wage over the course of their working lifetimes.