These days, it’s still a man’s world, even when the world is Jurassic. According to Bryce Dallas Howard, she was paid “so much less” than co-star Chris Pratt for her role in Jurassic World Dominion, the result of a 2014 salary negotiation Howard says left her disadvantaged. Discussing a 2018 Variety report that discovered Howard was paid $2 million less than Pratt for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Howard reveals the pay discrepancy was even wider than the reports stated.
“The reports were so interesting because I was paid so much less than the reports even said, so much less,” Howard says, per Insider. “When I started negotiating for Jurassic [World], 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.”
Although a pay gap beyond the $2 million mark is hard to stomach, Howard says Pratt did his part to advocate for her when and where he could. Although her onscreen contract dealings seem to have been set years ago, Howard says Pratt always pushed for the pair to receive equal pay when it came to alternate revenue streams flowing from the franchise.
“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 gonna do all the negotiating. We’re gonna be paid the same and you don’t have to think about this, Bryce,’” Howard shares. “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.”
While Pratt’s support of Howard is admirable and necessary, the principle of needing a higher-paid male co-star to go to bat for equal compensation is an all-too-familiar Hollywood trope—and one of the bad ones, too. After all, there’s already plenty of onscreen dinosaur action in Dominion— it’s high time prehistoric pay structures took their final bow.