As the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements continue to gain traction in Hollywood, more and more studios, producers, filmmakers, and others will change the way they do business and adapt. As pay disparities between men and women are brought to light with shows like “The Crown,” studios and networks are now having to focus on how they pay talent. One network that is coming forward with some changes to how they approach pay gaps is HBO.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, HBO’s programming president Casey Bloys has talked about how the Time’s Up movement has affected the network. According to the executive, HBO has gone through all their shows and ensured that there are no wild pay gaps between men and women.
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“One of the things that’s come out of thinking about the movement and some conversations with Reese [Witherspoon of HBO’s ‘Big Little Lies’], who’s really at the forefront, is something we’ve done recently. We’ve proactively gone through all of our shows — in fact, we just finished our process where we went through and made sure that there were no inappropriate disparities in pay; and where there were, if we found any, we corrected it going forward. And that’s is a direct result of the Time’s Up movement,” said Bloys.
However, there’s more to it than just making sure actors are paid fairly, no matter their gender. Bloys goes further to explain the thought process behind the varying wages that actors receive and why there might be gaps at the beginning of production, but how they should also be taken care of if a show gets picked up for future seasons.
“When you’re putting a show together, people come in with different levels of experience and maybe some people have won awards or something that makes them stand out. But when you get into season two or three of a show and the show is a success, it is much harder to justify paying people wildly disparate numbers, and that’s where you have to make sure that you’re looking at the numbers…,” continued Bloys.
While this is great news, and publicity, for HBO, it comes after a bit of controversy. Earlier this year, at a conference, HBO executives were speaking about the upcoming season of “Big Little Lies.” They talked about how the actors got significant pay increases for season 2, and one executive used the word “raped” to describe how the network felt with the new salary budget.
Bloys spoke about this, and not surprisingly, he had to do a bit of damage control. “Let me just say this about ‘Big Little Lies’ season two. Whatever anybody was paid was 100 percent earned and well worth it. This show was a giant hit for us and for the industry. I know there’s fascination with the negotiations but, listen, they earned it,” Bloys said.
The big question now is whether or not other networks will come forward with this sort of top-to-bottom audit of the salaries of their stars. Will we see the big networks like CBS, ABC, NBC, or FOX having similar adjustments? Or is HBO an anomaly because of their small stable of series? No matter the outcome at other networks, it seems like HBO has listened to the Time’s Up voices and made a definitive statement.
