Big little awkwardness.
“Big Little Lies” star Reese Witherspoon is opening up about the moment when ex-husband Ryan Phillippe called out her income status during the live broadcast of the 2002 Oscars.
The “Cruel Intentions” costars and then-couple were presenting the Academy Award for Best Achievement Makeup when the “Legally Blonde” star, now 44, asked if she could read the winner.
Phillippe, now 46, handed her the envelope and said: “You make more than I do, go on.”
During the awards show, the actress looked shocked to hear the quip.
“I forgot that ever happened,” Witherspoon recently told The HFPA in Conversation podcast. “And no it wasn’t scripted. He didn’t tell me he was gonna say that before it happened on-air. So I was a little bit flummoxed in the moment too, but ... why he said it I don’t know.”
The “Morning Show” star then said that, though more women are earning more money now than 18 years ago, it’s still “hard on women” who earn as much as or more than their male spouse.
“There’s so few women that make a lot of money that sometimes they’re shamed for it and sometimes they are expected to give more and do more and be more to others in the same position that, say, a male movie star would not be expected to,” Witherspoon said. “And that’s just a double standard that exists in our society.”
The “Wild” star recounted a time when her and Phillippe’s daughter Ava, now 21, was in second grade and came home crying because she’d been told her mom was one of the highest-paid actors.
“Don’t ever feel ashamed of a woman making money,” she told the then-8-year-old. “There are women all over this world who don’t have an opportunity or an education or the ability to make money. and the more women who make more money will give more money away, will take care of their societies ... will do more with that money.”
