Robin Wright 2016 At House Of Cards UK Premiere
Robin Wright negotiated a salary equal to Kevin Spacey‘s on Netflix’s hit political drama House of Cards.
Pay equity in Hollywood has been a main topic of conversation over the last couple of years, and Wright weighed in on it at an event in New York City Tuesday hosted by Judith Rodin, the president of The Rockefeller Foundation. During the InsightDialogues event, Wright was speaking more generally about pay equity when she was asked about her own dealings with the issue.
“I was like, ‘I want to be paid the same as Kevin,'” said Wright.
In House of Cards, Wright plays Claire Underwood, the wife of Spacey’s Frank Underwood. While the series bills Spacey as its star, Wright’s Claire has emerged as more of a co-lead than a supporting character. Noting that reality and her character’s popularity on the show, Wright decided it was time to go in and fight for equal pay.
“It was a perfect paradigm. There are very few films or TV shows where the male, the patriarch, and the matriarch are equal. And they are in House of Cards,” said Wright. “I was looking at statistics and Claire Underwood’s character was more popular than [Frank’s] for a period of time. So I capitalized on that moment. I was like, ‘You better pay me or I’m going to go public.’ And they did.”
When House of Cards began, there was little question that Spacey was the bigger star, with a longer and more acclaimed filmography and more name recognition. Wright had been on the cusp of superstardom in the late 80s and early 90s following turns in The Princess Bride and Forrest Gump, but the realities of being a mom put her career on the back burner.
“Because I wasn’t working full time, I wasn’t building my salary bracket. If you don’t build salary bracket with notoriety and presence, you’re not in the game anymore. You become a B-list actor. … You’re not box office material,” Wright said. “You don’t hold the value you would have held if you had done four movies a year like Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett did during the time I was raising my kids. Now I’m kind of on a comeback at 50 years old.”
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