Michelle Williams thanks studio for paying her equally in powerful Emmys speech

Michelle Williams livened up the 2019 Emmys broadcast Sunday with a powerful pay equity-themed acceptance speech.

After taking home the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her performance on FX's Fosse/Verdon, she thanked the network and studio behind the show for providing her with equal pay.

"They understood that when you put value into a person, it empowers that person to get in touch with their own inherent value," Williams said.

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This is a personal subject for Williams, who famously was paid just $1,000 for reshoots of All the Money in the World when her co-star Mark Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million. Earlier this year, she testified on Capitol Hill on the subject, saying, "There won't be satisfaction for me until I can exhaust my efforts ensuring that all women experience the elevation of their self-worth and its connection to the elevation of their market worth."

Williams in her speech Sunday also noted that a woman of color "stands to make 52 cents on the dollar compared to her white, male counterpart," encouraging Hollywood to listen to women when they "tell you what she needs in order to do her job." If they do, Williams concluded, these women will be able to "succeed because of her workplace environment and not in spite of it." Brendan Morrow