Amy Pascal speaks out on Sony hack and 'strangely freeing' moment

Speaking to Tina Brown at the Women in the World conference, Amy Pascal described a “strangely freeing” moment during the Sony hack, wherein her emails as the studio’s chief were exposed.

“There was this horrible moment where I realized there was absolutely nothing at all I could do about whether I’d hurt people, whether I’d betrayed people, whether I’d said things that I didn’t mean,” she said. “I couldn’t protect anyone—not their feelings, not what they thought of me. And it was horrible because that’s how I figured I did my job for all of my life and it was also strangely freeing because all of a sudden it was just what it was.”

During the hack, Pascal’s damaging emails leaked, including ones, via BuzzFeed, which found Pascal making insensitive jokes with producer Scott Rudin about what movies President Obama favors. Last week it was announced that Pascal would leave her role as Sony co-chair, entering a four-year production deal at the studio. At the conference, however, Pascal reportedly did not mince her words. about what happened. Re/code reported that she said: “All the women here are doing incredible things in this world. All I did was get fired.”

Brown also asked Pascal about the hack’s revelations that female stars were paid less than their male costars. “I run a business,” Pascal said. “People want to work for less money, I’ll pay them less money. I don’t call them up and go, ‘Can I give you some more,’ because that’s not what you do when you run a business. The truth is that what women have to do is not work for less money. They have to walk away. People shouldn’t be so grateful for jobs.”