Robin Wright Demanded Same Pay as Kevin Spacey for 'House of Cards'
“I was like, 'I want to be paid the same as Kevin [Spacey],'" she said.
— -- Did you think Claire Underwood would ever settle for less than equal.
Acclaimed actress Robin Wright, 50, spoke Tuesday at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York and said that she wanted equal pay for her role on "House of Cards."
“I was like, 'I want to be paid the same as Kevin,’" she said of Kevin Spacey, who plays her husband and the U.S. president on the show.
Wright is not just an actress, but a producer and director on the Emmy-winning series.
Wright's character Claire is as powerful and ruthless as Spacey’s Frank.
"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,'" she said, according to the Huffington Post, which covered the talk. "I was looking at the statistics and Claire Underwood's character was more popular than [Frank's] for a period of time. So I capitalized on it. I was like, 'You better pay me or I’m going to go public.’"
She added, "And they did."
Wright has been a major player in the series opposite Spacey since it debuted in 2013.
The talk with the Rockefeller Foundation was the first in a new series titled "Insight Dialogues."