Michelle Williams’s powerful Emmys speech called out the pay gap

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23rd Sep 2019

The 2019 Emmy Awards had no shortage of powerful acceptance speeches, from Patricia Arquette’s plea for trans rights in the wake of her sister Alexis’s death to When They See Us star Jharrel Jerome’s acknowledgment of the real-life Exonerated Five.

One of the most bracing moments of the night, though, was Michelle Wiliams’s acceptance speech for her Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series–winning performance as Gwen Verdon in the FX series Fosse/Verdon.

Flanked, as usual, by her best friend Busy Philipps, Williams took the stage and delivered a powerful speech about the scourge of pay inequity. In an industry still reckoning with the effects of #MeToo and plagued with a systemic history of abuse, Williams’s speech felt particularly relevant, not least because the actress has faced her own struggles with pay inequity (she earned just 0.07 per cent of what costar Mark Wahlberg did for reshoots on the 2017 film All the Money in the World).

Williams took care to note that pay inequity is a burden disproportionately shouldered by women of colour—who, she noted, earn just 52 cents on their white male counterparts’ dollar—and gave Hollywood a new motto for how to interact with women: “Listen to her. Believe her.” Read the full speech, which may have been partly inspired by last week’s #NotWorthLess movement, below:

“Thank you so much to the Television Academy for this, and to the incredible cast and crew who worked so hard to make this TV show, especially you, Sammy Rockwell. I know how hard you worked. I see this as an acknowledgement of what is possible when a woman is trusted to discern her own needs, feel safe enough to voice them, and respected enough that they’ll be heard. When I asked for more dance lessons I heard ‘Yes,’ more voice lessons, ‘Yes,’ a different wig, a pair of fake teeth not made out of rubber, ‘Yes.’ And all of these things, they require effort and they cost more money, but my bosses never presumed to know better than I did about what I needed in order to do my job and honour Gwen Verdon. And so I want to say thank you so much to FX and to Fox 21 Studios for supporting me completely and for paying me equally, because they understood that when you put value into a person, it empowers that person to get in touch with their own inherent value and then where do they put that value? They put it into their work.

And so the next time a woman, and especially a woman of colour—because she stands to make 52 cents on the dollar compared to her white male counterpart—tells you what she needs in order to do her job, listen to her, believe her. Because one day she might stand in front of you and say thank you for allowing her to succeed because of her workplace environment, and not in spite of it. Thank you. Matilda, this is for you, like everything else.”

This story originally appeared on Vogue.com.

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