It’s not a new revelation that Bryce Dallas Howard earned less than her male co-star Chris Pratt for the Jurassic World movies, one of many examples of high-profile gender pay gaps in Hollywood.
In 2018, Variety reported that Howard made $8 million for the 2018 sequel Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom while Pratt was paid $10 million, despite the two sharing equal billing and screen time. In a new interview with Insider, however, 41-year-old actress-director Howard says the disparity between their compensation was actually much more significant.
“The reports were so interesting because I was paid so much less than the reports even said, so much less,” Howard told the publication. “When I started negotiating for Jurassic, it was 2014, and it was a different world, and I was at a great disadvantage. And, unfortunately, you have to sign up for three movies, and so your deals are set.”
Howard did give Pratt props for helping her fight for pay equity when it came to other Jurassic-related income sources, like theme-park rides and video games.
“What I will say is that Chris and I have discussed it, and whenever there was an opportunity to move the needle on stuff that hadn’t been already negotiated, like a game or a ride, he literally told me: ‘You guys don’t even have to do anything. I’m going to do all the negotiating. We’re going to be paid the same, and you don’t have to think about this, Bryce,'” Howard said.
“And I love him so much for doing that. I really do, because I’ve been paid more for those kinds of things than I ever was for the movie.”
Howard and Pratt’s Jurassic trilogy, which launched in 2015 with Jurassic World and concluded with June’s Jurassic World: Dominion, has grossed more than $1.4 billion in the U.S. and $3.8 billion worldwide.
As Insider notes, issues of gender-related Hollywood pay gaps have become more and more public in recent years, with like Ellen Pompeo (Grey’s Anatomy) and Michelle Williams (All the Money in the World), among those opening up about earning dramatically less than their male counterparts.
The salary discrepancy has been so commonplace, in fact, that it qualified as a news story when it was revealed that Scarlett Johansson earned the same as her male co-stars for the Avengers movies.