Star of “The Color Purple” Taraji P. Henson talked movingly about her never-ending, tiresome battle with Hollywood’s pay disparity.
“I’m just tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do, getting paid a fraction of the cost,” she said when asked if she planned on quitting acting during a recent interview with Gayle King on SiriusXM radio. “I’m tired of hearing my sisters saying the same thing over and over.”
“I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ I have to,” she continued. “The math ain’t mathing. And when you start working a lot, you have a team. Big bills come with what we do. We don’t do this alone.”
Henson broke down how salaries get divvied up before reaching her bank account.
“When you hear someone go, ‘Such and such made $10 million,’ that didn’t make it to their account,” Henson continued. “Off the top, Uncle Sam is getting 50%. Now have $5 million. Your team is getting 30% off what you gross, not after what Uncle Sam took. Now do the math.”
“I’m only human and it seems every time I do something and I break another glass ceiling, when it’s time to renegotiate I’m at the bottom again like I never did what I just did. And I’m just tired,” she said, crying.
Turning to her “Color Purple” costar, Danielle Brooks, Henson said that the issue extends to the younger generations, too.
READ ALSO: I Was Offered $75K for an Oscar-Nominated Role After Initially Asking for $500K – Taraji P. Henson
“If I can’t fight for them coming up behind me, then what the fuck am I doing?” Henson said, continuing to cry, wiping tears from her face.
Henson said that another hardship is being told that she’s not bankable overseas, or studios making excuses.
“Twenty-plus years in the game and I hear the same thing, and I see what you do for another production and when it’s time for us to go to bat, you don’t have any money,” she said. “They play in your face. And I’m just supposed to smile and grin and bear and just keep going. Enough is enough.”
Henson claimed that her bad experience is the reason behind her other endeavors, which include The Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation for mental wellness and her own hair care brand, TPH by Taraji.
“This industry, if you let it, it’ll steal your soul,” she said. “But I refuse to let that happen.”
Her frustration was echoed by “Think Like a Man” costar Gabrielle Union, who wrote on X: “Not a damn lie told.”
“We go TO BAT for the next generation and hell even our own generation and above,” she said. “We don’t hesitate to be the change that we all need to see AND it takes a toll on your mind, health, soul, and career.”
Playing Shug in the 2005 movie “Hustle & Flow,” Henson became well-known. After three years, she portrayed Queenie in David Fincher’s film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” For her supporting turn as Brad Pitt’s adoptive mother, Henson was nominated for an Oscar.
Henson said in her 2016 memoir, “Around the Way Girl,” that she received “the lowest of six figures” in compensation, while costar Cate Blanchett and Pitt “got millions.”
According to the actor, she took home “less than 2%” of Pitt’s salary and was required to fork over cash for three months’ worth of site expenses. She claimed that she didn’t protest her pay out of fear of being replaced.
She gave credit to Tyler Perry for paying her decently (earning her $500,000 for the main role in “I Can Do Bad All By Myself”) and upping her baseline quotation, which had a knock-on impact for future talks.
Henson stated that Pitt and Blanchett “deserved” their “Benjamin Button” wages during an appearance on the podcast “Ladies First with Laura Brown” in 2021, but she also thought that her asking price was fair.
Henson claimed to have made $150,000, but after deducting taxes and team payments, her actual earnings were only about $40,000.
In an interview with Ellen Pompeo for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” in 2019, Henson stated that she is always required to demonstrate her viability as an actor.
Henson, who is well-known for her Emmy-nominated performance as Cookie Lyon on “Empire,” claimed that she remained working because she had to capitalize on the show’s momentum.
“If I was getting 5 or 10 million a movie, I wouldn’t work so much,” she said. “I’m working like that because I have bills to pay. I have dreams. I have aspirations.”
In a 2020 interview with Business Insider, Henson said she’s going to continue pushing to be paid her worth.
“I can fight until I’m blue in the face,” she said. “Until I have the people on the other side saying, ‘OK,’ I’m just a loudmouth fighting. And I’m not just a loudmouth. I’m really fighting for something that’s gonna benefit us all.”