Actors Claire Foy, who plays Queen Elizabeth II, and Matt Smith who plays Philip Duke of Edinburgh, attend the premiere of "The Crown" Season 2 in London, Britain, November 21, 2017.
Actors Claire Foy, who plays Queen Elizabeth II, and Matt Smith who plays Philip Duke of Edinburgh, attend the premiere of "The Crown" Season 2 in London, Britain, November 21, 2017. Reuters/Simon Dawson

Claire Foy did not receive backpay for her regal role in “The Crown.” There had been reports that she was to receive £200,000 (AU$355,000) to make up for the gender pay gap between her and co-star Matt Smith’s salary, but the 34-year-old English actress said it was “not quite correct.”

In a Daily Mail report in April, it was said that Foy, who played a young Queen Elizabeth in the Netflix series, received the amount as backpay for the disparity of amount of her and Smith’s pay. The report came after it was revealed that Foy was paid less than Smith, who played a young Prince Philip in the first two seasons of the show.

Smith was reportedly paid £10,000 (AU$17,740) more than Foy for each episode of the show. There were 10 episodes each of the first and second season. Foy reportedly earned £29,000 (AU$51,450) per episode. Apparently, the discrepancy between their pays was due to Smith’s fame as the former star of “Doctor Who.”

The producers had apologised to the actors, saying Foy and Smith were thrust into the controversy through no fault of their own as they did not know how much the other got. Moving forward, they said, no other actor would be paid more than the actress portraying the Queen.

A source told the Daily Mail that the issue had been “amicably resolved” after Foy was paid the difference in their wages.

But Foy said the report wasn’t accurate. In an interview with Al Arabiya to promote her latest film, “Girl in the Spider’s Web,” she said she wasn’t back-paid. “The fact that that is ‘fact’ is — not quite correct,” she said.

“Yes, it’s Netflix, but it’s a British production company. It happened at the same time as it was coming out with a lot of other people that there was a lot of pay inequality across the board — in the music industry, in journalism, in every industry. It’s across the board that it became part of a bigger conversation, which is an odd place to find yourself in.”

While she didn’t ask to be involved in the issue, she learnt that speaking out about it would help a lot of other people in the same situation.

“I realised early on that me being quiet about it or me not thinking about it in any way, and not associating myself with it, would be harmful to me and also lots of other people. It’s taught me a lot, and I’m still learning about it. I have not come out the other side and know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m still learning as much as anybody else is,” she said.

Foy has turned over the role of Queen Elizabeth to Olivia Colman for the third and fourth season of the show, which would be aired from 2019. Smith’s Prince Philip will be played by Tobias Menzies.

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