Actress Arden Cho is speaking out for the first time about why she turned down an opportunity to participate in the upcoming Teen Wolf movie.
According to Game Rant, Cho told The Cut producers offered her less than half her co-stars to participate in the Paramount+ project.
She played Kira from 2014-2016 on the MTV program and was the only woman of color out of Teen Wolf’s four female cast members.
“I could probably, off the top of my head, think of over ten Asian American actors I know who were paid significantly less than their counterparts,” she said. She said its time to take a stand.
“Sometimes you don’t have a choice to say ‘no.’ Sometimes you just need it. You’ve got bills to pay. I wasn’t saying ‘no’ necessarily for me or because I was angry. I was saying ‘no’ because I hope that there will be more equality in the future.”
Cho isn’t the first Asian American in Hollywood to be vocal about pay inequities.
Recently, writer Adele Lim declined to participate in the sequel of Crazy Rich Asians when she discovered her co-writer would be paid significantly more than what they offered her.
Some reports indicated Lim would have been paid as much as $700,000 less than Co-writer Peter Chiarelli, despite Chiarelli having much less experience than her.
Both Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park departed the reboot of Hawaii Five-O when the studio refused to give them equal pay to their co-stars.
Cho said news of the pay disparity did not come from here.
“I probably would’ve never shared it,” she told The Cut.
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Boy, that treatment by the producers suck. But her agent or manager was negotiating?