“I’ve had male friends say to me, ‘OK, you’re going too far with this Time’s Up shit!’ And I’m like, ‘What the fuck does that mean? I’m going too far with this equality thing? Like, what are you talking about? I’m going for equal, buddy,'” explains Tracee Ellis Ross in a new feature for The Hollywood Reporter. The industry mag brought the Golden Globe-winning “Blackish” star and six other comedy actresses — Drew Barrymore (“Santa Clarita Diet”), Alison Brie (“GLOW”), Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), Debra Messing (“Will & Grace”), Molly Shannon (“Divorce”), and Frankie Shaw (“SMILF”) — together to sound off on #TimesUp, #MeToo, and their experiences in Hollywood.
Roundtables of this sort offer an all-too-rare opportunity to watch female creatives with different projects bond with — and learn from — one another, and the resulting conversations are often refreshingly candid and informative. That being said, it’s worth noting that of the seven actresses participating, Ross is the only woman of color, and while sexism was addressed in-depth, there wasn’t much discussion about race or racism in the biz.
We’ve collected some of the highlights from the roundtable below. For more of the conversation and to watch videos of it, head over to The Hollywood Reporter.
On living in the age of #MeToo and #TimesUp:
Ross: “For me, the conversation and the narrative are exactly the same, the thing that’s changed is the connection and the relationship with other women. There is a camaraderie now.”
Shaw: “There has also been a collective release of shame.”
Barrymore: “I was always a producer. And before that, I was a kid, and unless you were a pedophile you weren’t messing with me and thank God no one was. But I was never an ingenue. And then when I started my production company, men never looked at me that way and I never had an issue because I was always working with them on their side. I think that dynamic saved me from a lot of situations.”
On actions they wouldn’t have taken or conversations they wouldn’t have had before the movement began:
Messing: “At the Golden Globes, when I spoke on live TV about E!, saying, ‘Why aren’t you paying your women equally?’ I never would’ve ever even thought about doing that before. The reason I did was exactly what you were talking about (looks to Ross). It was the community, being connected on a daily basis with groups of women, and saying, ‘Well, what can we do? How can we use our collective energy and platforms to focus the conversation?’ It was actually Amy Schumer. She was like, ‘Debra, if you can get there first, that would be awesome.’ It was her idea. And [I only did it] because I knew that there were tons of women who were like, ‘I’m with you, there is not gonna be fallout because we are all here standing right beside you.'”
On whether #TimesUp and #MeToo have changed conversations about pay parity in the workplace:
Brosnahan: “Yes. Again, the shame has gone away — out of this idea of asking for what you’re worth and asking to be paid equally. The biggest thing that I have noticed is that [there are] men in my life, who are progressive and who love women, who just don’t realize [the pay inequities between men and women]. It’s the same with the #MeToo movement. So, all of these women having honest conversations with the men in our lives as well has emboldened them to take action toward pay equality, too, which I’ve found really encouraging.”
Brie: “People are so uncomfortable talking about money, it’s so taboo, so you’re never on set talking to another actor about how much they’re getting paid on the project that you’re doing, and that’s why it’s been able to run rampant for so long, and the gap has been able to get wider because you’ve had no idea.”
Ross: “Mmm-hmm. I’ve found I have more freedom to have transparency. I’ve actually had real dollar conversations with girlfriends of mine in this industry and said, ‘OK, here’s what it is.’ And as a black woman in this industry, it is staggering the difference — what I’m fighting for versus what you might be fighting for. I am fighting to get where you start.”
Barrymore: “I think I’m just so [nervous] to ever go back to having no career. I know what it’s like to be told, ‘You’re done for a while, sit on ice in the black-list corner.’ And I revived my career — I started producing and having success with films for, like, 20 years and then I had kids and I stepped back. But when I [found myself] all of a sudden a single mom, I kind of had to go back to work and I didn’t know how to do that with kids and I was in a freak spiral. So when I got this show, I was like, ‘I’ll take whatever you can give me.’ Then on season two and three, I was like, ‘Maybe I’m of value to this show.'”
