Despite a heavily circulated report from The Daily Mail a few months ago that stated Claire Foy, The Crown’s titular crown, would be paid about $250,000 in back pay following the show’s gender pay gap scandal, the actress is now saying there was no truth to the report and she wasn’t offered additional money for her role as Queen Elizabeth II. In a new interview with Al Arabiya, Foy disputed how the outlet came to that conclusion. “That was what was reported that I was back-paid. I’ve never mentioned anything about it and neither have the producers. The fact that that is ‘fact’ is — not quite correct,†she said. “Yes, it’s Netflix, but it’s a British production company. It happened at the same time as it was coming out with a lot of other people that there was a lot of pay inequality across the board — in the music industry, in journalism, in every industry. It’s across the board that it became part of a bigger conversation, which is an odd place to find yourself in.â€
In March, one of The Crown’s producers, Suzanne Mackie, admitted during a panel discussion that Foy was paid less than Matt Smith, a supporting character, for their two seasons of work on the show. (Smith played Prince Philip.) “Going forward, no one gets paid more than the queen,†Mackie clarified. Smith later publicly supported Foy by saying “we should be paid equally and fairly,†while Foy opined how she found it “odd†to find herself “at the center [of a story] that you didn’t particularly ask for.â€