Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park speak during the Hawaii Five-0 panel discussion during Comic-Con at San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. July 23, 2010
Photo by Frazer Harrison for Getty Images
Update, July 5, 2017, 12:08 p.m: Daniel Dae Kim has shared a statement on his departure from Hawaii Five-0. Read it in full at the bottom of this post.
A representative for Grace Park told The FADER that the actress has no comment at this time.
Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park will not appear on the eighth season of Hawaii Five-0, the CBS program they have starred in since its debut in 2010. A new report in Variety claims that both actors were seeking equal pay as their white co-stars Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan, "but were unable to reach satisfactory deals with CBS Television Studios." Both Kim and Park are of Korean heritage.
Kim and Park were allegedly offered between 10-15% less than O’Loughlin and Caan's salaries. O'Loughlin and Caan also have contracts that give them "percentage points on the show's back end."
Hawaii Five-0 executive producer Peter Lenkov did not reference the negotiations in a statement on Kim and Park's departures:
“I will never forget meeting Daniel while still writing the pilot and being certain there was no other actor who I’d want to play Chin Ho Kelly,” he wrote. “Needless to say, Daniel has been an instrumental part of the success of Hawaii Five-0 over the past 7 seasons and it has personally been a privilege to know him. Grace’s presence gave Hawaii Five-0 a beauty and serenity to each episode. She was the consummate collaborator, helping build her character from day 1. They will always be ohana to us, we will miss them and we wish them both all the best.”
CBS issued a statement thanking the actors for their "enormous talents, professional excellence and the aloha spirit they brought to each and every one of our 168 episodes."
Neither Kim nor Park have released statements on their departures. The FADER has reached out for comment.
Hollywood has been criticized in recent years for pay gaps. The Sony email leaks distributed by Wikileaks revealed huge disparities between the salaries of men and women. Last year, Variety published a salary report that revealed another big pay gap: between white and minority performers.
Debbie D'Oyley, senior feature writer at The British Blacklist, told Newsweek that Hollywood's pay structure is white supremacy in action. “The color of someone's skin or ethnic features immediately identifies them as non-white and therefore of lesser value,” she wrote over email. “This is related to colonialism, missionary-based education, slavery, international aid/charity and, in the U.K., the class system, which is still alive and well.”