Robin Wright now receives the same pay as Kevin Spacey for her work on the Netflix drama House of Cards.
"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," Wright said during a conversation with the president of The Rockefeller Foundation, in front of a room filled with press and activists.
"I was looking at the statistics and Claire Underwood's character was more popular than [Spacey's character] for a period of time. So I capitalized on it. I was like, 'You better pay me or I'm going to go public," Wright said, "And they did."
Spacey was said to make $500,000 an episode during the show's second season with the possibility it could move up to $1 million, according to Business Insider. Wright made $5.5 million for the show last year, according to Forbes, which, at 13 episodes a season, would be a little over $423,000 an episode.
Both Wright and Spacey have starred in all 52 episodes of the show. Spacey has been an executive producer since the beginning of the series while Wright became an executive producer for the show's previous season. However, the actress has directed seven episodes of House of Cards, making her the second most-frequent director of the series, according to IMDb. Spacey has not directed.
Wright took home a Golden Globe for her work in the first season of House of Cards. She has received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for lead actress in a drama for every year of the show so far.