We Are Not Amused

The Crown Producers Are Very Sorry for Paying Claire Foy Less Than Matt Smith

“We want to apologize to both Claire Foy and to Matt Smith . . . who have found themselves at the center of a media storm this week through no fault of their own,” says Left Bank Pictures.
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By Robert Viglasky/Courtesy of Netflix.

It’s been a week since the world first learned that Claire Foy, the Golden Globe-winning star of The Crown, was paid less for two seasons of the Netflix series than her co-star Matt Smith, the Prince Philip to her Queen Elizabeth II. Naturally, the news inspired a fair amount of outcry—including a petition calling for Smith to donate the difference between his salary and Foy’s to Time’s Up.

And while neither Smith nor Foy has yet responded to the commotion, Tuesday did bring a mea culpa from Left Bank Pictures, the production company behind the hit Netflix series—one that takes full blame for the disparity, absolving Smith in particular of any potential guilt.

“We want to apologize to both Claire Foy and to Matt Smith, brilliant actors and friends, who have found themselves at the center of a media storm this week through no fault of their own,” the statement, via Deadline, begins. “Claire and Matt are incredibly gifted actors who, along with the wider cast on The Crown, have worked tirelessly to bring our characters to life with compassion and integrity.”

The statement also makes clear that Left Bank is solely “responsible for budgets and salaries; the actors are not aware of who gets what, and cannot be held personally responsible for the pay of their colleagues.”

Word of the discrepancy between Smith and Foy’s salaries first broke on March 13, when Crown producers and Left Bank execs Suzanne Mackie and Andy Harries were speaking at a panel at the INTV Conference in Jerusalem. To some degree, it made sense that Foy would get less than Smith during the show’s first season on Netflix, even though her role was larger than his; when they were initially cast, she was something of an unknown, while he was already famous for starring on Doctor Who. But there was much less justification for continuing to pay Foy less for The Crown’s second season, after she shot to stardom on the merits of her Crown performance and won her Globe.

The indignant responses prompted by this news were no doubt also influenced by other recent stories about Hollywood’s infuriating wage gap, most significantly the incredible disparity between what Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams each made for All the Money in the World re-shoots. Williams worked for scale on the re-shoots, which were necessary to erase accused sexual harasser Kevin Spacey from the film. Ultimately, she earned less than $1,000 for them. Wahlberg, however, was reportedly not contractually obligated to do re-shoots; he drove a tough bargain, refusing to approve his new co-star, Christopher Plummer, unless he received a $1.5 million payday. The outcry sparked after this information went public eventually drove Wahlberg to donate his re-shoot money to Time’s Up.

In its statement, Left Bank indicates that it is “absolutely united with the fight for fair pay, free of gender bias, and for a re-balancing of the industry’s treatment of women”; at the panel on March 13, Mackie also said that in the future, the actress playing the Queen will be The Crown’s best-compensated cast member: “Going forward, no one gets paid more than the Queen.” It’s too bad that Foy won’t benefit from that largess; starting in Season 3, the series will debut a new cast of actors to play the aged-up royals, featuring Olivia Colman as the next Elizabeth.