House Of Cads! Actress says show broke vow to pay her same as Spacey
IT is a drama series portraying intrigue and betrayal in the upper echelons of politics.
Now its leading actress Robin Wright has told of her shock at discovering she has been the victim of some double-dealing by producers of hit US show House Of Cards.
Miss Wright, 51, says she was promised she would be on the same wage as her co-star Kevin Spacey – only to find she has been paid less.
She plays ruthless First Lady Claire Underwood opposite Spacey as scheming President Francis Underwood in the Netflix drama, based on the original 1990 BBC series.
Miss Wright has told how she warned studio bosses she would go public if they did not give her the same rate as Spacey, and thought they agreed. But speaking to fashion website Net-a-Porter’s The Edit magazine, she said: ‘I believed them, and I found out recently that it’s not true. So that’s something to investigate. Claire and Francis are equivalent as far as their power, their union and the plot.’
According to estimates by the Huffington Post, Spacey was making £384,000 per episode by 2014. Miss Wright’s pay between 2014 to 2015 averaged £322,000 an episode.
In a separate interview with Variety, Miss Wright said the House Of Cards writers could have difficulty coming up with scripts for the next series – thanks to the antics of President Donald Trump. ‘Trump has stolen all of our ideas,’ she joked.