While strides have been made
to bring attention to the pay gap between men and women, there is still a long way to go. It's
noticeable in every industry, but especially in Hollywood, where our favorite stars make obscene amounts of money, and their salaries are quite public. In fact, every year they publish lists of the highest-paid actors in film and television, and it's a bit of a sausage party.
However, Ellen Pompeo is shaking up the old boy's club by inking a lucrative, history-making new deal. Are you a fan of Grey's Anatomy? The ABC medical drama premiered in 2005, and has ran for fourteen seasons, with over 300 episodes. (I'll give you a couple weeks to binge-watch the entire series. Okay, are you back now? Good.) It's an impressive run, and Ellen plays the lead character, the clever, compassionate hard-working head of surgery, Dr. Meredith Grey. Other medical dramas like "E.R." lost their lead actors, but Ellen's been there since the beginning.
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In her new deal with ABC, Ellen will earn more than $20 million a year, which comes out to $575,000 an episode. To put that in perspective, only a handful of actors get paid more than that, according to Variety's estimates. The cast of CBS' The Big Bang Theory earns $900,000 an episode.
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson earns $650,000 per episode for HBO's Ballers. And Robert De Niro will earn $775,000 an episode for an upcoming Amazon show. (Wait, what? Robert De Niro's doing an Amazon show? Welcome to 2018.)
However, Ellen's deal is especially lucrative, because it includes some sweet back-end deals - a seven-figure signing bonus, equity points, producing credits, and confirmation that she'll star in Season 15 and 16, should they get picked up. When you add all of that together, you get $20 million a year. Pretty impressive salary bump, right? If all that money isn't enough to help Dr. Grey get over McDreamy's death, I don't know what will.
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In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Ellen encouraged other actresses in the business to demand equal pay, and defended herself against anyone who might call her "greedy." Yes, $20 million is a lot of money, but remember, the studios make
billions off of actors' work.
"I'd call Shonda [Rhimes, the creator of Grey's Anatomy] and say, "Am I being greedy?" But CAA compiled a list of stats for me, and Grey's has generated nearly $3 billion for Disney. When your face and your voice have been part of something that's generated $3 billion for one of the biggest corporations in the world, you start to feel like, "OK, maybe I do deserve a piece of this."
It's all about perspective, right? It might be hard for some of us to comprehend earning millions of dollars and billion of dollars for our work. (Not me - I get paid a million dollars per article.) However, I think we can all relate to knowing our worth, and wanting to get paid what we deserve. And it's especially important for women to speak out, after getting a paid a fraction of what men get paid for so long.
In a related story, check out
13 inspirational quotes that prove women deserve equal pay.
