Christy Carlson Romano is claiming she was paid half of Shia LaBeouf‘s salary on the Disney Channel series “Even Stevens,” despite the two being “co-leads” with “the same screen time.”
Romano opens up about her time on the show, which ran from 2000 to 2003 and followed the antics between a brother and sister with clashing personalities, in her new memoir “Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star.” In an Instagram post about the book, which is out now, Romano revealed the alleged pay disparity.
“I was a kid and the female lead on ‘Even Stevens.’ I was paid half of what Shia was paid; we were co-leads and had the same screen time,” Romano said, adding that while penning her memoir, she found a handwritten letter her mother wrote her agent in 2000 “asking for equal pay and admitting we were deep in debt.”
A photo of the letter is included in the post. It reads: “Shia receives $12,000 per episode and Christy $6,000. With 30% going into trust, we can’t make it here financially. This show also holds her up from other work that pays more. Christy wants what Shia is getting.”
In her post, Romano continued: “By then, my paycheck was keeping us afloat. My mom was fighting for me, and she was also fighting for a household that depended on a teenage girl. It took me years to understand I could love her for advocating for me and still wish I had gotten to just be a kid.”
She added that “Shia earned every dollar, and this book is not about him or any other famous name you might recognize.” Rather, she said her memoir is about “a girl who grew up too fast, and a business that decided she was worth half.”
Representatives for Disney and LaBeouf did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
Romano has previously spoken about her relationship with LaBeouf while filming the show, saying they were “like oil and water” on the “Not Skinny but Not Fat” podcast last month.
“I was being raised and brought up to be this type A, I mean exactly like Ren Stevens. Like, you know your lines, you hit your marks, you don’t mess up,” she said. “You’re a New York kid, like that comes with a certain echelon… I was trying to go to pre-college Juilliard… everything we were doing, my mom called it cross-training, came with a certain dollar amount of training.”
In contrast, LaBeouf had a tumultuous childhood and has spoken about living with his recovering addict father, which was the inspiration for his 2019 film “Honey Boy.”
“He was a Venice Beach kind of bum kid,” Romano said. “It’s like that kind of vagrant fun, but also very chaotic and very scary lifestyle, and he was very young to be having that.”