Mark Wahlberg Was Paid 1,500 Times More Than Michelle Williams to Reshoot All the Money in the World

Just days after Michelle Williams wore black on the red carpet to protest gender inequality in Hollywood and elsewhere at the Golden Globes, USA Today published a report claiming that Mark Wahlberg was paid roughly 1,500 times more than her to reshoot scenes from All the Money in the World. (Ridley Scott’s film had to be changed in mere weeks after the director decided to pull Kevin Spacey’s scenes from the film in November in order to maintain a holiday release; Spacey was replaced by Christopher Plummer.) Although in December, Scott said of the cast, “everyone did it for nothing,” it seems now that Wahlberg’s team negotiated a fee of $1.5 million, while Williams was paid less than $1,000.

The report revealed that, although Williams and Wahlberg are represented by agents at the same agency, William Morris Endeavor, “Williams wasn’t told” about the tremendous fee arranged for Wahlberg. As for Williams, she previously told USA Today that it had been her understanding that the actors were largely volunteering their time. “I said I’d be wherever they needed me, whenever they needed me. And they could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted,” said Williams. “Because I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort.” The report also noted that in August, Forbes claimed that Wahlberg was the highest-paid actor of 2017, earning $68 million. Williams’s pay for reshooting All the Money in the World came to $80 a day, or less than 1 percent of what Wahlberg made.

Williams’s friends and other celebrities were outraged on Twitter about the huge pay gap, especially after the Golden Globes, where many of the industry’s luminaries, including Williams, made their views in support of the Time’s Up initiative (combatting power imbalances between men and women in the workplace) known. Although the disparity between Williams’s and Wahlberg’s salaries possibly points to the differences between what agents are willing to negotiate for their male and female clients, it also points to the fact that Wahlberg, who seems to be the only major player in the film paid so heavily for his time, including director Scott, is not very generous with it.