Gillian Anderson Was Offered Half The Salary Of David Duchovny For X-Files Reboot
The truth is out there.
Scully has another to reason to be pissed at Mulder. Gillian Anderson has revealed in an interview: she was only offered half the pay of David Duchovny for the upcoming X-Files: The Truth is Still Out There reboot.
The two will star together for the six-part series revival starting this Sunday, but Anderson said that she was originally not considered of equal value to her male counterpart.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, she said:
“As usual, they come to me with half of what they want to offer David,”
As the gender pay gap in entertainment becomes increasingly apparent, Anderson also noted that she was treated inferior to Duchovny when she originally signed on for the series.
Revealed in an interview with the Daily Beast, she said when she auditioned to the show she originally didn’t have many screen credits and was even initially required to stand a few feet behind Mulder on camera and never to walk side-by-side. It took the actress three years to achieve the same wage as Duchovny, despite sharing the same amount of screen time and often carrying the brunt of story-lines.
In the years between the X-Files concluding and the reboot, Anderson has held critically acclaimed role in The Fall and is about to star in BBC’s War and Peace.
“It was shocking to me, given all the work that I had done in the past to get us to be paid fairly,”
she told the Daily Beast.
“I worked really hard toward that and finally got somewhere with it.”
Anderson negotiated to eventually receive the same pay as Duchovny. Gendered salary disparities for actresses compared to actors were disclosed as common place in the Sony Hack files. Anderson said she wanted to use her position as a platform for change.
“In this climate of women talking about the reality of [unequal pay] in this business, I think it’s important that it gets heard and voiced,” she said. “It is… sad. It is sad.”