At 25 & blonde I’d have rows about getting my boobs out... I don’t sense that happens now
that it’s even been an issue or that we’re even talking about it. It’s unbelievable.” Jo doubts she’d get the same amount of cash as Jake Wood, who plays Tanya’s husband Max Branning, if she returned full-time to Eastenders. Jo continues: “It is a delicate balance. I wouldn’t go back to Eastenders and expect to get
ON PAY EQUALITY FOR MALE AND FEMALE STARS
paid the same as Jake straight away because he’s shown them a loyalty by staying with it and being there, so it is tricky and it’s not as black and white.”
But she did insist on exactly the same pay as Shakespeare & Hathaway co-star Mark Benton and she urges other women not to be shy asking for what is only fair. She says: “It’s important that Mark and I be on the same pay and we are, and I’m open about that, I’ve always been quite happy to ask for that and women should.” Things have started to change since the BBC pay gap scandal which revealed Danny
Dyer and Adam Woodyatt were the two biggest earners on Eastenders.
Now Jo wants men to even take pay cuts if they can to help redress the balance. She says: “We’ve got a new generation of women and writers, so we’ve also got a new generation of men. There are just as many of my male counterparts who’d be as surprised as me that women weren’t getting paid the same and feel just as strongly that they should be. Men should be willing to move.”
Jo is something of a feminist and says she’s already started teaching her nineyear-old twins Freddie and Edie about actress Emma Watson’s Heforshe gender equality campaign. Jo believes men and women should work together to make each other stronger. She says: “It’s men who make incredible women possible and vice versa because I hate the feeling you have to be anti-men at the moment, men are bloody great.”
Her “bloody great” man is drama teacher Neil Madden, her husband of 11 years. She says of their relationship: “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Professionally Jo’s dream is to join Coronation Street.
But only if she can be the next landlady of the Rovers Return in the style of Corrie legend Bet Lynch.
She says: “I would make a great Bet Lynch. I would love a bit of leopard print and to stand behind the bar holding a diamante vape. Soaps have always had strong women and I’m open to everything.”
■ Series Two of Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators, BBC One, Monday, 2.15pm.
If you’re doing the same job, it’s fair to be paid the same. It is shocking it is an issue
JO JOYNER