We love a King that not only gave opportunities, but fair compensation as well.
What's amazing is that he could have easily lowballed an offer, because those opportunities for Black actors just wasn't there at the time. But he didn't do that.
Taraji P. Henson had been steadily acting for over a decade, with nearly three dozen projects under her belt, before she reached a critical turning point in her career: what she thought was a fair paycheck.
"Hollywood can be cheap. They love a great performance at a discount price ... IF they can get it," she says. "I always seemed to get respect, as far as work [went]. I just needed to get my money."
The shift she saw came when she first collaborated with writer-producer-director Tyler Perry, on "The Family That Preys."
Henson was just coming off "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" when she initially started talking with Perry about the project and, when she told him she didn't get paid exactly what she hoped for on "Benjamin Button," he told her what to go for and became "the first person to pay me what I thought I deserved at the time," Henson says. The two went on to work together two more times, for 2009's "I Can Do Bad All by Myself" and 2018's "Acrimony."
https://variety.com/2019/film/features/taraji-p-henson-empire-pay-parity-walk-of-fame-interview-1203109010/
