Adele Lim, a screenwriter for “Crazy Rich Asians” has decided to not return to write for the movie’s sequel. This was due to her feeling she was not being paid enough for her work. And she was right.
The Hollywood Reporter announced that her co-writer Peter Chiarelli, a white male, was being offered upwards of $1 million for his return to the sequel, while Lim was offered somewhere over $110,000. This could have been understandable, given that “Crazy Rich Asians” was the first film that Lim wrote for. But she proved herself worthy of creating a monumental, humor-filled movie and should be compensated as such for the sequel, especially considering her career as a successful television writer as well.
Lim does not blame Chiarelli though. She told the Hollywood Reporter that he “has been nothing but incredibly gracious.”
In response to Chiarelli offering to split his pay with her if she came back she said, “What I make shouldn’t be dependent on the generosity of the white-guy writer.”
But Lim is correct. It should not be the job of her white male counterpart to put his own pay in jeopardy, but the job of Warner Brothers to pay their employees for what they produce for the company, not based on their gender, race or ethnicity. It is also the job of the general public to hold them accountable for doing this and raising concern and publicity for problems such as the one Lim is facing now.
Lim quitting raises another concern with how these big corporations operate their studios. In lieu of her leaving, Warner Brothers tried everything in their power to hire another writer of Asian descent. This raises the question of if she was really there for her writing ability or if she was there to appease the public of having an Asian female writer on a Asian-oriented romantic comedy.
Lim states her own concerns of minority representation in the media, telling the Hollywood Reporter that it feels as though they are only hired to “sprinkle culturally specific details on a screenplay, rather than credited with the substantive work of crafting the story.”
Representation is always good, but why is it only being done in TV shows and films that relate to that writer’s ethnicity. Why can we not simply have minority writers for each and every film or have minority actors be normalized in everyday media?
Others involved in “Crazy Rich Asians” are standing behind Lim. Acclaimed actress, Gemma Chan, and the director, Jon M. Chu, went to Twitter to show their support to their fellow Asian American. They not only showed their support to Lim, but let their voices be heard for every minority in Hollywood to ask for and not settle to be paid for something less than they are worth.
Photo courtesy of Vanity Fair
