“Westworld” star Thandie Newton says she will be receiving the same pay as her male costars for the show’s upcoming third season, shattering “calcified pain, resentment, frustration.”
Contract negotiations are currently underway with the HBO series, Newton told Vanity Fair, saying, “We’re all equal across the board. It’s really exciting. It’s unprecedented. It’s–goodness; it shatters so much calcified pain, resentment, frustration. It just shatters it.”
Because of the progress being made, Newton vowed to never take on another project that would pay her less than her male counterparts.
“I wouldn’t do anything if it didn’t. Definitely not,” she said. “F— that. It literally sets a precedent, and [HBO is] leading the way, which is amazing.”
Newton’s revelation comes almost a week after costar Evan Rachel Wood told TheWrap that her paycheck didn’t match her status for the series’ first two seasons. At least, it wasn’t equal to what the leading men were raking in.
“I think I’m just now to the point where I’m getting paid the same as my male co-stars,” Wood said in a recent interview with Sharon Waxman, TheWrap’s founder and CEO.
With the sophomore installment about to premiere, Wood found out she was getting a bump for Season 3 equal to the likes of Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris — the men of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s drama (well, the latter still is, as of that messy freshman year finale).
“I was just told that, you know, ‘Hey you’re, you’re getting equal pay.’ And I was like [gasp]. And I almost got emotional,” Wood said. “I was like, ‘I have never been paid the same as my male counterparts … Never, never.’”
Earlier this month, HBO boss Casey Bloys addressed the topic of pay parity at the premium cabler following comments made by an exec who said the bump in salaries the cast of “Big Little Lies” received for Season 2 “short of raped” the network.
“One of the things that’s come out of thinking about the movement and some conversations with Reese [Witherspoon], who’s really at the forefront, is something we’ve done recently,” Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter. “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 Times Up movement.”
A spokesperson for HBO has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.
“Westworld” Season 2 will premiere Sunday at 9/8 c on HBO.