Robin Wright demanded equal pay with Kevin Spacey for House Of Cards

The actress has appeared in the same amount as episodes as her male co-star 
Speaking up: Robin Wright demanded equal pay from Netflix
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images
Jennifer Ruby18 May 2016
The Weekender

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Robin Wright demanded to be paid the same as co-star Kevin Spacey for her role on House Of Cards.

The US actress, who has appeared in every episode of the show, told Netflix that she would ‘go public’ with her salary if it did not match her male co-star’s.

Speaking at an event for the Rockefeller Foundation on Tuesday, the 50-year-old said:

“I was like, ‘I want to be paid the same as Kevin’,” she said.

“It was the 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.”

Wright continued: “I was looking at the statistics and Claire Underwood’s character was more popular than [Frank’s] for a period of time.

“So I capitalised on it. I was like, ‘you better pay me or I’m going to go public.’ And they did.”

Wright plays First Lady Claire Underwood in the hit Netflix show, opposite Spacey’s President Underwood.

As well as starring in all 52 episodes of the show, the actress is also executive producer on the series and has also directed a number of episodes.

According to Forbes, Wright is thought to have made an impressive $420,000 per episode.

Speaking about how taking time out of her career to raise her children meant that her earning potential dropped, she added:

“Because I wasn’t working full-time, I wasn’t building my salary bracket.

“If you don’t build that… with notoriety and presence, you’re not in the game anymore. You become a B-list actor. You’re not box office material.

“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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