The Hollywood Gender Pay Gap And Can Women Be Funny?

Entertainment Weekly
Seth Rogen jokes ‘our Sony hacking’ led to wage gap discussion
BY DEVAN COGGAN
May 20, 2016

OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE, Bette Midler, Shelley Long, 1987, wearing false mustaches

More than a year after the 2014 Sony email hack exposed the salaries of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, the conversation about gender pay inequality in the industry has reached a fever pitch. Actresses like Jennifer Lawrence, Patricia Arquette, and Jessica Chastain have all spoken out about the wage gap, and Seth Rogen, whose movie The Interview was believed to have sparked the hack, has one thing to say about it: You’re welcome.

“Thanks to our Sony hacking, everybody knows about it,” Rogen joked during an Entertainment Weekly SiriusXM interview with the cast of Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. “Technically, you guys are welcome. If we hadn’t done that, then Jennifer Lawrence wouldn’t know.”

Rogen and his Neighbors 2 costars Rose Byrne and Zac Efron sat down with EW’s Sara Vilkomerson to talk about the film and whether Hollywood has made any progress toward closing the gender pay gap. The short answer? No. But Byrne believes that things are headed in the right direction.

“At least there’s a conversation about it, and it’s being brought to light, which I think is really important,” she said. “Because it’s only through that that there can be change, so hopefully we’ll see more of that.”

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Byrne, who’s reprising her role as Kelly Radner in the R-rated comedy, also weighed in on being constantly asked about whether women can be funny.

“I’m so naÃ¯ve to that,” she said. “When we did Bridesmaids and we were on the tour, that’s all anyone would talk about, like, ”˜Oh my God, women are funny!’ It’s like we were dolphins or something.”

“Everyone knows dolphins are funny,” Rogen added, laughing. “It is ignoring that Shelley Long and Bette Midler made like 20 hilarious movies together, and there was Gilda Radner and tons of funny [women]. It was the same thing when we made Knocked Up. It was as though I was the first not completely conventional looking human to star in a movie. And I was just like, have you heard of John Candy and Bill Murray?”