What Hollywood Actually Pays: 14 Guests Tell the Truth About Money

How much do you really make in film, TV, and media? Fourteen Sista Brunch guests break the industry's biggest taboo and talk real money — the actual rates, salaries, and budgets behind the careers.

You'll hear what a producer's cut of a budget really looks like (and why it's the first thing studios cut), how one executive learned a white colleague was earning six figures more for the same level of work, what showrunners pull in a week, how an independent journalist funded a whole TV show, what composers and location managers actually charge, and why one producer took a job just to keep her house out of foreclosure. From studio offices to indie sets, nobody holds back.

Featuring: - Kamala Avila-Salmon — studio budgets, producer pay & executive salary bands - April Reign — consulting, speaking fees & media futurism - Effie Brown — producer pay, backend reality & near-foreclosure - Kai Bowe — showrunning, unscripted rates & the S-corp advantage - Karen Horne — executive salaries, bonuses & the pay gap - Georgia Fort — funding independent journalism - Felicia D. Henderson — self-financing through investors - Aaliyah Williams — documentary budgets - Asha Chai-Chang — cost of living & career strategy - Ashlee Hypolite — free training & community-college pathways - Diana Williams — entrepreneurship & the new creator economy - Kelly Harris — location department & union rates - Marie Douglas — composer rates & contracts - Rraine Hanson — art department minimums Sista Brunch is the podcast building the largest archive anywhere of the stories of Black women and Black gender expansive people thriving in film, TV, and media.

Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Shawn Pipkin-West. Watch the full episode on YouTube @TruJuLoMedia .

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