Evan Rachel Wood Will Finally Be Receiving Equal Pay as Male Co-Stars in Season 3 of 'Westworld'
She may be the face of HBO’s hit show Westworld, but Evan Rachel Wood has revealed she has not been getting paid as much as her male costars.
The actress, 30, explained that despite her years of acting in successful shows and films, she still was not making the same amount as costars Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris – and has never received equal pay on any other project in her career.
This is now changing after she agreed to a third season of the hit.
“I think I’m just now to the point where I’m getting paid the same as my male co-stars,” Wood said in an interview with The Wrap‘s Sharon Waxman on Monday.
Wood was given a raise for season 3 of the HBO hit series, which means she is now being paid as much as Hopkins and Harris.
“I was just told that you know, ‘Hey you’re, you’re getting equal pay,'” Wood said. “And I was like [gasp]. And I almost got emotional. I was like, ‘I have never been paid the same as my male counterparts… Never, never.'”
“I have not moved. And I’m not saying I’m in like dire straits. I’m very lucky… It’s more about if you’re getting paid fairly or the same, or if you’re getting paid less simply because you’re a woman, that’s not fair,” Wood added.
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“There’s a lot of politics, but there’s a lot of things that are now being talked about in a different way,” she continued. “There is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes. There is a lot of trying to make things equal and trying to make things fair. But this is the first time that somebody made a point of being like, ‘Hey you’re getting this. And you deserve it.’ And that was nice.”
The actress, who has also acted in The Ides of March and Trueblood, has been outspoken about women’s rights and her own experiences with sexual abuse.
In February, Wood bravely gave an emotional testimony in front of a House Judiciary Subcommittee in Washington, D.C. to advocate for Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights Acts.
During the hearing, the actress said the two rapes happened “a decade ago” and described the abuse she endured from one of her previous boyfriends.
“It started slow but escalated over time, including threats against my life, severe gas-lighting and brainwashing, waking up to the man that claimed to love me raping what he believed to be my unconscious body,” Wood said during the panel. “And the worst part: Sick rituals of binding me up by my hands and feet to be mentally and physically tortured until my abuser felt I had proven my love for them.”
“I struggled with self-harm to the point of two suicide attempts, which landed me in a psychiatric hospital for a short period of time. This was, however, a turning point in my life when I started seeking professional help to deal with my trauma and mental stress,” Wood said. “But others are not so fortunate, and because of this rape is often more than a few minutes of trauma, but slow death.”
