Zoe Saldana recently broadened the ongoing conversation about Hollywood’s pay gap in a new interview with USA Today.
While male stars are routinely treated to over-the-top extravagances, the “Avatar” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” star observed, their female colleagues have trouble securing a basic necessity like child care during shooting.
Among the perks male superstars receive are private jets, a group of assistants and/or bodyguards and “a really phat penthouse or… a yacht instead of them staying on land.”
“But,” continued Saldana, “a woman comes in going, ‘OK, I have a child. You’re taking me away from my home. You’re taking my children away from their home. And you’re going to make me work a lot more hours than I usually would if I was home. Therefore, I would have to pay for this nanny for more hours — so I kind of need that. And they go, ‘Nope, we don’t pay for nannies.’”
That’s not where Hollywood’s motherhood penalty ends, either. “It will never be the right time for anybody in your life that you get pregnant,” said Saldana. But last year, when she became expectant with her twins, “the productions I was slated to work on sort of had a panic. I heard through the grapevine there was even a conversation of me being written off of one of the projects.”
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, are you kidding me? It’s this bad?’” she added. “Right when I just feel super-duper happy, is that inconvenient for you? That me, as a woman in my thirties, I finally am in love and I am finally starting my life? And it’s [screwing] your schedule up? Really?”
USA Today notes that Saldana and her team “fought to have child care included in [the actress’s] deals,” though it’s not clear whether they succeeded.
Saldana currently stars in Maya Forbes’ excellent “Infinitely Polar Bear.” Next on her slate are a slew of guaranteed blockbusters — “Star Trek 3” (2016), three “Avatar” sequels, “Guardians of the Galaxy 2” — and Ben Affleck’s period drama “Live by Night.”
https://content.jwplatform.com/videos/TW6FSonG-720.mp4
