"If I was Oliver Colman": Olivia Colman addresses the pay disparity in Hollywood

Olivia Colman is opening up about a pressing issue plaguing the movie industry: pay disparity.

The Oscar-winning actress, in a recent interview with CNN's The Amanpour Hour, addressed the very prevalent issue of the wage gap in Hollywood. She went so far as to say that:

"I'm very aware that if I was Oliver Colman, I’d be earning a f*ck of a lot more than I am."

Olivia Colman is currently doing promotional rounds for her latest movie, Wicked Little Letters, a British black comedy mystery movie directed by Thea Sharrock, which also stars Jessie Buckley. The film revolves around a real-life controversy where residents of the town of Littlehampton start receiving letters filled with obscenities that lead to chaos in the community. It was in one such interview that Olivia Colman addressed the issue.

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Olivia Colman mentioned a 12,000 percent difference between her and her co-star's wages

The beloved actress made a recent appearance on CNN's The Amanpour Hour, where she discussed the disparities in wages she has encountered within the film and television industry.

Olivia Colman said:

"Don’t get me started on the pay disparity, but male actors get paid more because they used to say they drew in the audiences. And actually, that hasn’t been true for decades but they still like to use that as a reason to not pay women as much as their male counterparts."

The host, Christiane Amanpour, then asked Colman about her personal experience with pay disparity and whether she had faced it herself. In response, Olivia Colman, an Oscar-winning actress renowned for her roles in numerous critically acclaimed projects, gave a surprising reply.

"I'm very aware that if I was Oliver Colman, I’d be earning a f*ck of a lot more than I am. I know of one pay disparity, which is a 12,000 percent difference."

Olivia Colman is not the only mainstream actress to raise this issue recently. In a conversation for The Hollywood Reporter's Color Purple December cover story, Taraji P. Henson opened up about feeling stuck within the similar low offers despite having a successful career in the industry.

She said:

"I've been getting paid and I’ve been fighting tooth and nail every project to get that same freaking [fee] quote. And it’s a slap in the face when people go, 'Oh girl, you work all the time. You're always working.' Well, goddammit, I have to. It’s not because I wish I could do two movies a year and that’s that. I have to work because the math ain’t mathing. And I have bills."

She went on to address how her race also played a significant role in the disparity and how she wanted to leave behind a better legacy for Black girls.

"I've been doing this for two decades and sometimes I get tired of fighting because I know what I do is bigger than me. I know that the legacy I leave will affect somebody coming up behind me."

This gap, incidentally, has been proven beyond a doubt by several studies.

In 2019, a team of economists led by Dr Sofia Sanchez discovered that, on average, a male actor earns $1.1 million more for every movie compared to their female co-stars with similar experiences. And the gap is even wider for women of color.