But she’s older. Older women are, by definition, worth less.
Female actors, especially older ones, are routinely paid less than their male counterparts, regardless of their achievements or degree of fame. How anyone could even entertain the thought that Gillian Anderson was offered half of Duchovny’s salary because she no longer looks like Gillian Anderson boggles the mind.
I’d have to agree that the stupidity of the notion far outweighs any sexism involved. And I do think there’s some sexism involved in the way that we evaluate the attractiveness of older men and women. For a funny take on this, see Inside Amy Schumer: Last F**kable Day. Soundtrack definitely NSFW.
What I hear the OP saying is that Gillian Anderson is worth less money because she is well beyond her last F**kable Day.
Agreed. It’s “sexist” only if you answer “no” to, “If Anderson looked more like Scully and Duchovny looked less like Mulder, than should he be paid less than her because of it?”.
However, assuming “it’s just not The X-Files without both Mulder and Scully,” and, “it’s just not Mulder if it’s not David Duchovny, and it’s just not Scully if it’s not Gillian Anderson,” they should be paid the same.
I can see where people are coming from when they say that my opinion is possibly sexist, and that what I said certainly sounds like an opinion of someone who is sexist. I cannot provide any meaningful rebuttal to the idea that on the surface it sounds sexist, because I recognize that people are wary when women are treated differently than men. I understand the cautiousness of people claiming that when I say I’d make the same statement in reverse the fact that I actually haven’t tends to point to the fact that I’m being sexist even though I know in my heart of hearts that what I said is the absolute truth.
I guess what I take away from this is that I need to be a bit more careful in making statements that are negative toward specific women even if they are based solely on the merits of that particular woman. This sort of thing is something that people like me have to learn from experience, because it makes absolutely no sense when viewed from my logical perspective. I know my opinion wasn’t sexist because it’s simply based on a very simple fact of recognition of the actress, so I fail to see when others notice that it has the appearance of sexism because of their full recognition and lack of understanding of the reasons behind my statement. I was failing to understand how my comments were being perceived by other people, which is a common fault of mine, since I generally lack an understanding of the emotional intricacies that drive other people’s reactions.
Thank you for your responses; they have been enlightening.
The Fall is a BBC/RTE production, not a Netflix original, but you are bang-on about everything else. Anderson has certainly done a wider and more interesting range of stuff than Duchovny has post X-Files.
Well, let’s put it this way - if I were Duchovny I’d refuse to do the job if Anderson was paid less and that is including taking a pay cut to even it out. Unless Duchovny was de facto going to be the main character with twice the screen time. Just MHO on the whole fairness thing.
Yes, yes - business isn’t inherently about fairness. But that’s still how I would look at it.
Regardless, as I stated above and in agreement with most everyone else I don’t think Anderson’s appearance should have any bearing on the pay scale. As someone noted above this is X-Files 15 years later, not X-Files from the end of the old series. People age differently - it’s part of the character.
They can do the X Files without Scully, they can’t do it without Mulder. He’s the star, she really was just the eye candy. Just because all the nerds in the world fell in love with her doesn’t change that.
Yeah. Scully is basically the Robin to Mulder’s Batman. Stories with both of them are great, but solo Batman stories are far more popular and marketable than solo Robin stories.
• Was Anderson paid less than Duchovny in the original series?
• Is she being paid proportionately less now?
If she’s not being paid proportionately less, then there’s really no issue to talk about. One can argue that ought to get paid the same at this point (if there was a disparity to begin with), but that would be an argument about the relative bankability of the two actors (that relative bankability may have changed over time as well, and it may even be due to sexist attitudes, but it would be a complex argument).
If she is being paid proportionately less now, that could well be due to Hollywood’s, yes, sexist way of treating female actresses as they age.
The idea she might be getting paid proportionately less because she looks less like her character than she used to does seem a little odd. That would seem to be your own idiosyncratic logic. Isn’t it more likely that the Hollywood execs are simply paying her proportionately less just because she got older and women are perceived as worth less once they get older?
I think that is more likely. So it’s quite possible that your friend saw you as buying into that more likely way of reasoning, instead of your own idiosyncratic reasoning. Your friend may have perceived you as being disingenuous in your language; i.e., as hiding your sympathy with the more sexist position.
FWIW, I don’t think perceptions of men being more attractive longer are simply “due to society.” It’s pretty clear that it’s biological: men stay fertile longer; women less so. Thus, the Hollywood attitude may be influenced by such biological hard-wiring, but it’s still sexist if the looks of the person are not particularly relevant to the part. I.e., equally qualified character actors of either sex should be paid the same for the same type of part; women should not be generically discounted as they age simply because younger women are used more for their sex appeal in certain parts.
How is this unrecognizable compared to this, but this isn’t equally unrecognizable from this?
IMO, Gillian Anderson looks the same, albeit older, and would look even more like her younger self after a couple of hours in a salon with a skilled hairdresser. Duchovny’s hairstyle isn’t dramatically different from Mulder’s, but his face sure has changed over the years… As it should. He’s aging.
This argument might make sense to you if you honestly can’t recognise Anderson as Scully, but I for one find her easily recognisable. We’re not talking a transformation like Lara Flynn Boyle’s, which I agree has left her unrecognizable as Twin Peak’s Donna. Even so, if they got her back to reprise her old character, docking her past because her appearance has changed its still wrong. She can still play the character or she can’t, end of story.
I’ll take X-Files with or without Scully. Mulder is important and that’s already been shown to be true when they ran the series without him and viewership plummeted.
I think that is a good reason Dochovny can demand a higher pay rate than Anderson.
To say Anderson doesn’t look like Scully is ridiculous and probably routed in sexism.
I agree that the show was not good without Duchovny. But we have no way of knowing what the show would have been like with Duchovny but without Anderson, because that didn’t happen. What I missed most when Duchovny left was the history and relationship between the two characters.
If I WAS Duchovny (well more accurately, in his position) that IS what I would do. Or like you said something based more along the lines of time on screen, number of words spoken kinda thing.
But, you ALSO need to keep in mind many of these actors are egotistical assholes (a shock I know). And some of them most definitely tie how much they are paid to what they think of themselves. It could be Big D would never EVER be in a movie where she was paid as much as him because he thinks she is second rate acting hack.
No Big D., no movie (well at least not a non reboot of sorts).
On the flip side, Anderson COULD have INSISTED on equal pay for equal work. But apparently she did not.
Because she had the temerity to get older without (much, if any) plastic surgery to attempt to hold on to her “look” from the original X-Files era. We all know that the signs of facial aging hit women harder than men, because the cheeks thin out and the face generally gets thinner and bonier.
She had rounded cheeks as a young woman, and now has a narrower face with much more obvious cheekbones. If she did have plastic surgery to change this about herself, it proves what a plastic surgeon I saw said would happen if I had that done – “You won’t look like yourself anymore.”
Also, makeup has *drastically *changed from the original X-Files era. We don’t wear obviously heavy, cakey foundation and matte lipsticks anymore.
I didn’t mean to say she didn’t add her own unique value, I’m just going back to my premise that they could continue the X Files without her, and she’s worth less than Duchovny to them.
According to her Daily Beast interview, Anderson was paid less than Duchovny for the first three years of The X-Files (I don’t see that the article says by how much) but was then able to negotiate an equal salary. That’s why she was so surprised to be offered half what he was getting for the new miniseries.