Tyler Krenzin
Lantern Staff
In America, society is working to create more opportunities where women are paid the same as men and are working in roles men predominately served in. Hollywood, now, is no different in the way that they have shaped a path for women specifically to succeed. We are starting to see the rise of women used as the heroine of huge movie franchises. This leads the way for women to close the gap that is prevalent in the industry. Here, we come to the situation of Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Williams and the reactions on Twitter. To simplify, reshoots were necessary for the movie All the Money in the World after the controversy surrounding Kevin Spacey. Reshoots can be expensive, and according to Michelle Williams she’d be wherever they needed her, whenever they needed her.
“They could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted,” Williams said. “Because I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort.”
So where is the controversy? Well, Williams discovered how much her co-star, Mark Wahlberg was being paid for the re-shoots. Williams was paid $1,000 dollars as reported by USA Today. This is about one percent of the $1.5 million paid to Wahlberg for his reshoots. However, I am having trouble finding why Williams has the right to be upset. After saying that the production company can have her salary for the reshoots, she should be happy that they gave her anything. Just because Wahlberg, who is probably one of the busiest actors this year, didn’t feel like working more for less money doesn’t mean the whole world gets to chastise him.
This brings me to the problem with the internet. When hearing of the situation and the disparity between the pay checks of Wahlberg and Williams, the internet exploded. Like most stories that end up going viral, a lot of people that are outraged by this know very little about what actually happened. Social feminism is always looking for the next thing to hate, the next thing to be mad about, and they showed up in force to attack Wahlberg. But did it come to anyone’s attention that Wahlberg was paid because he’s MARK. FREAKING. WAHLBERG? According to Forbes, Wahlberg was the highest paid actor of 2017, so it just makes sense that he wouldn’t want to work for free, and these reshoots were probably never stipulated in his contract.
Alas the internet found its scapegoat, and Wahlberg was probably told by his agent that the only way for this to go away is to donate money. The $1.5 million that he earned from the reshoots was pledged to be given to the Time’s Up defense fund, a noble cause that needs support, but we all know Wahlberg only made this donation to get people off his back and into the seats of his next movie. It’s unfortunate that Williams was only paid one percent of the money Wahlberg was paid. However, when saying you would work for free, don’t be upset when other people are not as noble.