Crown producers apologise over gender pay storm
"Actors are not aware of who gets what, and cannot be held personally responsible for the pay of their colleagues."
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Left Bank Productions, producers of The Crown, have apologised to stars Claire Foy & Matt Smith, after stories emerged about a gender pay gap.
A petition is calling on Smith to donate the higher salary he received to the Time’s Up campaign.
However Smith has a greater marquee name than Foy, due to Doctor Who and other roles.
“We want to apologise to both Claire Foy and to Matt Smith, brilliant actors and friends, who have found themselves at the centre of a media storm this week through no fault of their own,” the company said.
“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.
“As the producers of The Crown, we at Left Bank Pictures are 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.
“We understand and appreciate the conversation which is rightly being played out across society and we are absolutely united with the fight for fair pay, free of gender bias, and for a rebalancing of the industry”s treatment of women, both those in front of the camera and for those behind the scenes.
“We all have a responsibility to do what we can to ensure that these issues are tackled, and as a leading production company we want to make our contribution to the debate.
“As company policy we are engaged in conversations with ERA 50:50 and going forward are keen to talk to Times Up UK; organisations which are working to ensure all women have a voice.”
Producers have since confirmed “Going forward, nobody gets paid more than the Queen,” to be portrayed by profile actress Olivia Colman.
Source: Metro
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- Tagged with Doctor Who, The Crown
One Response
I’m not sure the normal process of workplace arbitration can apply especially for individual stars who sign contracts based on their box office value, Matt Smith obviously has star popularity and a good agent, he is also known in the USA with his Dr Who role, I suspect the negotiations for all the actors appearing in The Crown was completed to both parties satisfaction, at least initially. As happened for X Files actor Gillian Anderson who publicly revived her complaint for equal pay with David Duchovny, gender inequality is a useful political tool but that should not necessarily make gender a qualification for enforcing changes in commercial contracts that had already been signed.