Mark Wahlberg Is Donating His Two Million Dollar Paycheck To Charity Because Everyone Is A Cry Baby

(Slate) — After drawing fire for reportedly negotiating a $1.5 million payday for participating in reshoots for All the Money in the World while his costar Michelle Williams worked for a per diem totaling less than $1,000, Mark Wahlberg has announced he’s donating the money to the Time’s Up legal defense fund in Williams’ name, Variety reports. The reshoots were necessary to replace disgraced actor Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer, and while Williams agreed to work for nothing in order to save the film, Wahlberg got paid. People should be compensated for the work they do, whether they’re movie stars or lowly crew members, but Williams wasn’t told Wahlberg was getting paid, and the same agency, WME, negotiated both Wahlberg’s deal and Williams’ non-deal.

Now, in an attempt to set things right after becoming a go-to example of the gender pay gap in Hollywood, Wahlberg is donating his paycheck to Time’s Up, Hollywood’s institutional response to the post-Weinstein era. The organization’s legal defense fund is explicitly designed to provide support to the kind of blue collar workers who don’t make headlines when they get harassed or paid less than their male coworkers, so this seems like a surprisingly just outcome. Wahlberg explained his thinking in a statement: Over the last few days my reshoot fee for All the Money in the World has become an important topic of conversation. I 100% support the fight for fair pay and I’m donating the $1.5M to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund in Michelle Williams’ name.

I already wrote about this uproar back when it first happened. I thought it was absurd that people were giving Wahlberg a hard time for this and trying to spin it as a “pay gap” issue when in reality it’s just a guy negotiating a contract and getting paid money to do a job.

Now, I’m furious. You fucks on social media are such cry baby morons that you shamed a guy for getting market value to work and now he’s forfeiting all his money and then some. That’s patently absurd. Wahlberg is an idiot for donating this, as everyone would’ve forgotten about it in a week, and you’re all morons for getting mad about it. Michelle Williams volunteered her time, like a dummy, so it’s not a “pay gap” problem. There was nothing heroic in saving Sony Pictures a million dollars. That’s where the paycheck came from, not a Kevin Spacey victim fund.

Basically everyone involved in this story, now Wahlberg included, is a fucking idiot. You’re either irrationally mad about something that isn’t worth getting mad about or you’re donating money that you could’ve kept because people would’ve forgotten about it in no time. If any PR company came to me and told me to give up two  million dollars because dumb people are misunderstanding a situation they would’ve gotten the Jim Calhoun. Not a dime. Not a fucking dime.