Olivia Colman Says if She Were a Man Named Oliver She Would Get Paid a ‘F–k of a Lot More Than I Am’ | Video

Conversations about pay disparities between men and women in the film industry aren’t new, but one aspect that never fails to surprise is just how aware of those differences so many stars are. While speaking on CNN’s “The Amanpour Hour,” Oscar-winning actress Olivia Colman admitted, “I’m very aware that if I was ‘Oliver’ Colman, I’d be earning a f–k of a lot more than I am.”

“And I’m not saying— absolutely, yes, I’m aware of, I know of one pay disparity, which is a 12,000% difference. Yes, do the maths. I know,” she added.

Colman joined host Christiane Amanpour alongside director Thea Sharrock. The pair worked together on the film “Wicked Little Letters.” As an aside, Colman followed by telling the director she’d tell her the story about that massive pay difference once they got off-air.

Pay disparities between male and female actors was a key issue in last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike. The union found there is a 25% “unexplained” wage difference that was even applicable to some of the biggest names in the industry.

In 2015, Jennifer Lawrence wrote an essay for Lena Dunham’s newsletter Lenny on the gender divided in Hollywood, titled “Why Do I Make Less Than My Male Co-Stars?” in which she explained, “When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn’t get mad at Sony. I got mad at myself.”

“I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early. I didn’t want to keep fighting over millions of dollars that, frankly, due to two franchises, I don’t need,” Lawrence added.

Three years later, Liam Neeson weighed in on the issue and described it as “disgraceful.” While promoting his movie “The Commuter,” Neeson said of the issue, “There’s a lot of discussion about it, and a lot of healthy and necessary discussion about it because the disparity sometimes is f–ing disgraceful.”

More recently, Taraji P. Henson broke down in tears while running through the cost of working as a Black actress. She said, “I’m just tired of working so hard [and] being gracious at what I do, being paid a fraction of the cost. I’m tired of hearing my sisters say the same thing over and over. You get tired. You hear people go, ‘You work a lot,’ well I have to. The math ain’t mathing.”

“So when you hear someone saying ‘oh, such and such made $10 million’ — no, that didn’t make it to their account,” Henson added. “Know that off the top, Uncle Sam is getting 50%. So do the math, now we have 5 million — your team is getting 30% of whatever … off of what you gross, not after what Uncle Sam took, now do the math.”

Watch the interview with Olivia Colman in the video above, in which she also discusses her favorite swear word — which she notes American audiences don’t much care for.

The post Olivia Colman Says if She Were a Man Named Oliver She Would Get Paid a ‘F–k of a Lot More Than I Am’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.