Brown refuses to identify the show on which she was paid the same as a white male guest star, but she's clear it wasn't her new series, ABC's ”The Mayor," or her first as a regular cast member, NBC's ”Community."
She recalls sitting in a hair-and-makeup trailer, joking with her fellow actors about pay, when a guest star ”just blurted out" what he was making for the episode.
”I was like, ‘That's five dollars less than me,'" Brown tells Variety. ”It's not like this was Tom Cruise. If Tom Cruise comes, back up the Brinks truck. This was a journeyman actor. He wasn't performing a series-regular role." Brown soon realized she was making far less than the other series regulars on the show, ”because no one else in the room was shocked" by what the guest star earned. ”I've been a series regular now for eight years on network television, and I'm making what a guy coming for a week is making," Brown says. ”And it's because I'm a black woman."