A star of “The Crown” says pay differences are no longer a secret after her battle
Clare Foy is happy that her fight for fair pay on The Crown saved jobs for other women actors.
The British star of the first two seasons The Crown of the Netflix high-budget drama was famously furious when she found out that her co-star Matt Smith, who played a young Prince Philip, was getting paid more than her. Smith played the lead part of Queen Elizabeth II.
When this difference was found, the show’s creators, Left Bank Pictures, said it was because Smith was more well-known before the show. And when Foy became the drama’s big star and won a Golden Globe and two Emmys for her work, they promised that this would never happen again on the show.
Foy told The Times newspaper this past weekend that she felt like she had made a difference in her field. The only difference is that as a female actor, you will be told that you get equal pay.
Someone told me that they were paid the same because of it. The business world will always try to keep as much at the top as they can, but they can’t keep it all secret anymore.
Foy’s next movie role is in All of Us Strangers, which also stars Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, who is up for an Oscar. People have said that she played the best Queen Elizabeth on screen in The Crown. She told The Times that her favorite scenes were the ones between the Queen and her husband, which were made up by the show’s creator, Peter Morgan. She said, “You’re always trying to find them, and then all of a sudden you realize, ‘I’m comfortable in this person’s shoes now. We were trying to figure out what was going on behind closed doors.