Taye Diggs Says Cast Of ‘The Best Man Holiday’ Were Paid ‘Pennies’
The Best Man franchise created a lot of buzz over the holiday break as they dropped the final installment to the series. The Best Man: The Final Chapters is now streaming on Peacock.
However, Taye Diggs, who plays Harper Stewart, claimed that he, along with the rest of the star-studded cast, was just paid half of what they were worth.
“We knew our worth. And all of us had to say, ‘Okay, we want to be a part of this and it’s special. But at the same time, if we do it, you know, we got to take half the amount of money that we’re worth’… But we all did it,” Diggs said on an episode of Strong Black Legends for Netflix’s Strong Black Lead.
“Terrence [Howard] had been nominated for an Oscar. And it’s disrespectful to go to a studio and look at these people in their face and say, ‘You know how much I’m worth. I know how much I’m worth. But you’re smiling at me, asking me to do this for pennies,'” Diggs explained.
However, the cast was able to bring in more dollars for the sequel which solidified Diggs’ point of making the check for each actor higher. The first two projects grossed the following:
- The Best Man (1999) $34,102,780
- The Best Man Holiday (2013) $70,525,195
“We did more than we thought and the movie was… more than we thought. We didn’t know it was going to affect people in the same way. I didn’t know it was going to affect people in the way that it did,” Diggs said.
Take a look at Diggs’ interview below:
