Guess Who Queen Claire met up with for a drinks session in Soho...
THEY may have given up their roles as the Queen and Prince Philip in The Crown, but it seems Claire Foy and Matt Smith remain great friends.
The actress, 34, and the 36-year-old former Doctor Who star were spotted enjoying a lengthy catch-up over several drinks in Soho.
While Miss Foy drank red wine, her onscreen husband stuck to beer as the pair chatted animatedly.
They were sharing a table by the side of the pavement outside the Dean Street Townhouse hotel and restaurant, with another female friend.
Given that they have not worked together since the 2017 second series of Netflix’s royal drama, they may have had a lot to catch up on.
Smith is in a long-term relationship with Downton Abbey star Lily James, 30. Miss Foy announced her split from her husband, actor Stephen Campbell Moore, 41, in February last year.
While Miss Foy played the lead role in The Crown, winning a Golden Globe award for her performance, it emerged last year that she had been paid less than Smith. After finding out that he received £10,000 more per episode, Miss Foy said she was upset and felt like she had become an ‘inadvertent spokesperson’ for woman in the gender pay gap row.
‘I was deeply hurt by it, because I’d been working on that show for two years. I loved everybody on it, and then I realised, there’s been a big, fat, dirty secret that nobody’s ever talked about,’ she told Porter magazine last year. ‘But there was also that thing [of being] an inadvertent spokesperson. Why did it have to be me? I could have said nothing. And I think everyone would have preferred that.’
Smith stuck up for Miss Foy amid the pay row and The Crown producers apologised to both of them for the furore.
Despite the wage disparity, it seems that Miss Foy and Smith have maintained a strong friendship off screen.
Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies, both 45, have taken over from the pair for the third series of the drama, which has recently finished filming. Oscar-winner Miss Colman plays the Queen at an older age, with Menzies taking over the mantle of the Duke of Edinburgh.
Miss Foy, who previously starred in BBC historical drama Wolf Hall, has gone on to have a number of roles in Hollywood films including First Man and The Girl In The Spider’s Web. Smith will next be seen on the big screen as notorious American cult leader Charles Manson in Charlie Says.