Evan Rachel Wood now gets paid as much as her male co-stars on Westworld
The second season of Westworld premieres this Sunday. The show takes place in the future, where people visit an Old West theme park populated by robots to explore their cowboy (or cowgirl) fantasies. That might entail catching an outlaw, robbing a bank or even hooking up a prostitute. (It is HBO, after all.) The androids - or hosts - look indistinguishable from the humans, and are programmed to follow certain narratives. But when one routine update make hosts self-aware, they try to break of their programmers control, and all hell breaks loose.
Evan Rachel Wood plays the main character in the series, Dolores Abernathy, the rancher's daughter. Dolores is the oldest host in the park, and one of the first androids to become self-aware. She realizes her entire life has been an elaborately constructed lie, doomed to play out the same narratives, over and over. But despite being the face most associated with the show, she made less than her male co-stars for the first two seasons. Like the rebellious robots in Westworld, Hollywood actors have become self-aware - of the gender pay gap.
Now The Wrap reports that Evan Rachel Wood will make just as much as her male Westwood co-stars on season three. That means she'll be paid equally to the likes of Anthony Hopkins (Dr. Robert Ford) and Ed Harris (Man In Black), among others.
"I almost got emotional," Evan told the entertainment site. “I was like, ‘I have never been paid the same as my male counterparts … Never, never.' [With] Westworld,” it’s like, I get it a little more. It’s like, ‘Well, you’re Anthony Hopkins or Ed Harris.’ But I think now we’re all doing equal amounts of work and really hard work.”
Evan, who's 30, says she's been making more or less the same wage on acting roles for a while. While she's definitely not on "dire straits" financially, she still appreciates the extra bump. It's not fair to earn less than your co-workers for doing the same work, just because you're female. "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," Evan added.
HBO executive Casey Bloys was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter last April. When asked how the Times Up movement affected how they did business, Casey replied, "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 what is that new fat wage Evan will make on Westworld, season 3? $20 an hour! Woo! Make it rain! Actually, I have no idea. They don't say. But I'm sure it's good.
Well, that's great there won't be any inappropriate disparities in pay. Season two of Westworld is said to be ambitious, introducing a Samurai theme park in addition to the Old West one. According to an eagle-eyed Redditor, the Delos Destinations website confirms there will be six theme parks total. Maybe one of those parks will be a magical fantasy world where where women get the same pay as men in every industry. Nah. Too outlandish.