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Taraji P. Henson asked for $500,000 to play Brad Pitt's mother. She got $150,000 and says about $30,000 of it was left. The movie made $335 million.

In the video below, Gayle King asks if she's quitting acting. Taraji covers her face and cries before she can say a word. Then she does the math out loud.

In 2008 she was third on the call sheet for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, behind Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Her 2016 memoir says she'd been promised "somewhere in the mid six figures." At a 2023 SAG-AFTRA event she said she asked for $500,000 and was first offered $100,000.

It came up to $150,000 with a condition. She had to cover three months of New Orleans hotel bills herself. "Insult, meet injury," she wrote.

On The Real she did the sum. Half the $150,000 went to taxes. Her team took 30% of the full fee, $45,000. That left $30,000, and her son's school tuition that year was $30,000. "Literally, for five months, that's what I made."

The memoir puts her pay at less than 2% of what the studio paid the top name on that call sheet, Pitt.

She got an Oscar nomination for the role. Fifteen years later she said she almost walked away from The Color Purple over pay. That same month she told Gayle King: "Every time I do something and I break another glass ceiling, when it's time to renegotiate, I'm at the bottom again."

The case for the studio: Pitt sold the tickets, and she doesn't dispute his money. "They deserve to earn what they get," she said of Pitt and Blanchett.

Her side: "I too worked my ass off, and at the time I couldn't say no. I didn't have any power."

$335 million at the box office. An Oscar nomination. One year of school fees.

Every day, one star's real paycheck.

Was that Hollywood paying for box office power, or paying a Black woman less because it could?

Suzanne Somers made $30,000 an episode on the No. 1 comedy in America. John Ritter made $150,000. She asked for the same, and ended up on a separate set with a chair, a phone and a police guard.

In the video below, she tells it herself, right up to the phone call she got from Ritter two decades later.

It was 1980 and her contract was up. She told Ritter and Joyce DeWitt she'd ask for big money and a piece of the profits, and because the three had equal-pay clauses, they'd all get it if they backed her. "So I'll be the patsy."

Her husband, Alan Hamel, took it into the meeting. The Hollywood Reporter later wrote that $150,000 was what Ritter was getting, and close to what Alan Alda and Carroll O'Connor got on lower-rated shows. She says she didn't know about Ritter then, and was asking for what men on TV averaged.

Producer Mickey Ross stomped out his cigarette and leaned in: "You want me to share my blood with her?" Hamel said yes. "At that moment, my career was over."

She waited at home, heard the front door close and knew from the sound. He walked in and said, "You're out."

ABC's offer, per THR, was $5,000 more. She still had to finish the season, cut to about a minute an episode. A police guard met her at the back door. "My set was a chair and a phone and a lamp and one camera." "I would usually leave in tears."

The case for the producers: THR reported at the time that she skipped two tapings, citing an old back injury. And with those clauses, her raise meant raises for all three.

In 2003 Ritter called her for the first time in about a decade. "He said, 'Hi, babe.' He said, 'I forgive you.'" She thought back to 1980: "You're getting the big money and I'm in, you know, the middle of the desert." She said thank you. A month later he died.

$150,000 asked. $5,000 offered. Twenty years later: "I forgive you."

Every day, one star's real paycheck.

Did Somers lose the show for asking what the men got, or for skipping work to force it?

Tina Turner walked out on Ike Turner with 36 cents in her pocket and ended up on food stamps. For 16 years, she says, he kept the money from every record she sang on. In the divorce she gave him everything else and asked for one thing: her own name. Ike wanted that too. Eight years later, that name sold over 10 million albums.

"He kept all the money from the act," she said. "He always said, 'When you leave, you will leave like you came.'"

In the video below, she tells Jonathan Ross how she got out of a Dallas hotel while Ike slept, and why she nearly died crossing the freeway outside.

It was July 1976. They had fought in the car on the way to a show. She waited until he fell asleep, went out through the kitchen and ran.

She filed for divorce that month. It was finalized in 1978. She took no money and no property, and she kept the name.

To pay her bills she booked spots on game shows like Hollywood Squares.

In 1984, at 44, she released Private Dancer. The next year she won three Grammys.

The case for Ike: he found her, gave her the name Tina Turner and wrote the early hits that made the act.

She walked away from 16 years of money and kept two words.

Should she have fought Ike for her share, or was walking away with only her name the better deal?

Stick around for one every day: the stars you grew up on, and what it cost them to get free.

The Backstreet Boys were selling millions of records when they found out what they had been paid since 1993: about $300,000. The man who built the band, Lou Pearlman, had made about $10 million from them. He had written himself into the deal as the sixth Backstreet Boy, with a member's share on top of his cut as manager.

When they sued, he locked up their touring equipment and shut their tour down for a while.

In the video below, Brian Littrell explains why he went to his bandmates. Then Kevin Richardson describes what Pearlman did the day they announced the lawsuit.

Pearlman was an Orlando businessman who leased private jets. In 1993 he put the group together and paid for it.

By 1998 they were one of the biggest bands in the world. Littrell watched them work "show after show after show" while "this guy is sitting in his office and he's getting checks." He hired a lawyer. The others joined him.

"Our bank accounts are nothing," Richardson says. Pearlman's "are growing."

Pearlman owned the name and threatened a cease and desist. They settled out of court. In 2008 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a Ponzi scheme of about $300 million.

The case for Pearlman: he paid for the house, the training and the first records before anyone knew who they were.

Five singers, about $300,000. One manager, about $10 million.

Was Pearlman a con man from the start, or did he earn his share by paying for the band first?

Stick around for one every day: the bands you grew up on, and who really got the money.

David Duchovny was paid more to play Mulder in The X-Files than Gillian Anderson was to play Scully. She had to fight Fox to get the same money for the same work. Twenty years later, when Fox brought the show back, it offered her half of his pay again. "We knew what David's offer was this time around," she said, "and it was twice as much as my offer was."

Her first reaction, she told Andy Cohen: "What the f**k?" Fox gave in. "Thank God," she said.

In the video below, she and Duchovny sit side by side on Jimmy Kimmel Live and admit it wasn't always friendly. Then she tells Jonathan Ross what Fox offered her in 2016, and Andy Cohen asks for her first reaction.

In 1993 she was an unknown. Duchovny had come off a big film. She has said that made sense at the beginning.

Then they were doing the same amount of work. She asked for parity and had to fight for it. When the first X-Files movie came along in 1998, she said she would not do it without equal pay.

In 2016 the show returned. Her agent called with the offer. She pushed back again, and Fox paid them the same.

The case for Fox: he was the bigger star when the show began, and in the end it matched his money.

Same show, same work, half the offer. Twice.

Should two leads on the same show always be paid the same, or does the bigger name deserve more?

One of these every day: a star, a paycheck, and what they were really offered, in their own words.