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Actress Brooke Davis Exposes Decades-Long Pay Disparity on Hit TV Show
14 Nov
Summary
- Actress Sophia Bush earned only $3,000 per episode on "One Tree Hill"
- She had little leverage to negotiate higher pay as a young, unknown actress
- After 20 years in the industry, she finally achieved pay parity with male costars
In a recent interview, actress Sophia Bush, who played the iconic Brooke Davis on the hit TV drama "One Tree Hill", has exposed the shocking pay disparity she faced during the show's 9-season run from 2003 to 2012.
Despite the show's immense popularity and success, Bush says she was severely underpaid as a young, unknown actress when she first joined the cast. "When I started on that show, pretty much everyone was coming from something. I had been the philanthropy chair of my sorority at USC. The difference in pay scale was wild," she explained. After deducting various fees and expenses, Bush was only taking home around $3,000 per episode.
Bush further revealed that the lengthy 6-year contract she signed gave her little room for renegotiation, as the network could cancel the show at any time. To make matters worse, the actress and her "One Tree Hill" castmates do not receive any residuals from the show's current popularity on streaming platforms.
However, the 43-year-old actress is now able to command equal pay to her male costars, but it has been a long and arduous fight. "It took me 20 years in this industry, doing 15 straight years of network TV without taking a year off ... literally, year 20 was the first time I got paid equally to my male costar," she said. "It was a fight. And no shock to anyone who knows me, I won."
