The leak uncovered multiple emails from Pascal which were deemed racist including racial jokes aimed at then-President Barack Obama.
[3] Her father, Anthony H. Pascal, was an economic researcher at the RAND Corporation who wrote about African American social inequality and the cost of AIDS.
[3][7][5][10] Pascal started her career as a secretary working for producer Tony Garnett at the independent production company Kestrel Films.
[12] Pascal joined Columbia Pictures in 1988, where she was responsible for the development of films including: Groundhog Day, Little Women, Awakenings, and A League of Their Own.
"[6] According to the Financial Times, "she employed an assistant who earned more than $250,000 a year, and had use of a private jet and other perks in keeping with Hollywood's golden era rather than an age of austerity.
[32][33] The company, called Pascal Pictures, hired Rachel O'Connor as production chief and Ian Dalrymple to open and run a New York branch.
[39] Pascal Pictures made a winning bid for a memoir by Zoë Quinn about "Gamergate" called Crash Override: How to Save the Internet from Itself, which was sold to Touchstone/Simon & Schuster for publication in September 2016.
[40] Pascal and Elizabeth Cantillon optioned rights for a TriStar TV series based on books by Eve Babitz set in 1960s-1970s Los Angeles.
[42] Together with Sony, Pascal obtained rights for the TV crime drama Darktown, which she plans to executive produce with Jamie Foxx.
"[53] On December 9, 2014, a group called "Guardians of Peace" hacked into Sony's computer system, which led to the theft of internal company documents.
"[56][61] Civil rights leader Al Sharpton suggested the apology was not sufficient, compared her to Donald Sterling, and called for more diversity in Sony's hiring pool.
[62] The screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin denounced the media's focus on Pascal's communications and many other emails released by the hack in an opinion piece for The New York Times, characterising the coverage as "giving material aid to criminals" and writing "at least the hackers are doing it for a cause.
[64][65][66] At the Writers Guild of America Awards 2014 on January 7, 2015, Kudrow, who was the presenter, mentioned the Sony hack again, arguing that it was disturbing "because Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal thought that was witty banter.
"[68][69][70] They added, "We must hold Pascal accountable here; not just for her horrendous comments, but also for her role at the helm of a corporate agenda that views Black America as one big, lucrative joke.
The difference between what men and women made was pervasive at Sony Pictures under Pascal, with only one female out of the seventeen studio executives earning more than $1 million per year according to the unconfirmed emails, and Columbia Pictures co-presidents of production Michael De Luca and Hannah Minghella serving in identical jobs but with a million dollar difference in pay.