Gillian Anderson offered half of David Duchovny's 'X-Files' pay
Think the Hollywood pay gap between men and women isn't real and insidious?
Here's an anecdote from X-Files star Gillian Anderson, who told the Daily Beast that she was offered half — half! — the salary of her male co-star David Duchovny for the series reboot, even after fighting during the original run of the show to close the gap between her and Duchovny.
She stammers for a moment, at a loss for words. “It is… sad,” she finally says. “It is sad.” (Anderson and Duchovny ultimately took home equal pay for the event series.)
Anderson also pointed out that this most recent interview isn't the first time she's publicly discussed the series' initial pay inequalities — it's just that nobody was paying attention.
“I’m surprised that more [interviewers] haven’t brought that up because it’s the truth,” she said. “Especially in this climate of women talking about the reality of [unequal pay] in this business ... It was shocking to me, given all the work that I had done in the past to get us to be paid fairly."
“Even in interviews in the last few years, people have said to me, ‘I can’t believe that happened, how did you feel about it, that is insane.’... And then it happened again! I don’t even know what to say about it.”