'The Crown' star Claire Foy admits she was ‘deeply hurt’ by the series' wage gap

Actor Claire Foy, who plays Queen Elizabeth II, attends the premiere of "The Crown" Season 2 in London, Britain, November 21, 2017 (Reuters)

Claire Foy isn’t hiding her feelings about Matt Smith earning more than she did on “The Crown.”

“I was deeply hurt by it,” she told PorterEdit, “because I’d been working on that show for two years. I loved everybody on it. And then I realized, there’s been a big, fat, dirty secret that nobody’s ever talked about.”

She didn’t, however, mean for that “dirty secret” to make her the face of the wage gap issue.

“But then 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,” Foy shared. “But I thought, if I do that, I will be cheating myself and all the other women I know.”

Foy was hesitant to come forward, but she knew that’s what production was probably banking on.

“You feel lucky to have a job. It’s so competitive. So, in that way, they rely on competitiveness and actors’ vulnerability to say, ‘They’ll accept it for 10 grand less.’”

After news of Smith’s and Foy’s salaries broke, Left Bank Pictures, the production company behind the hit Netflix series, said it would give her $275,000 in back pay. Foy later disputed that claim.

Smith told Page Six Foy should’ve been paid the same, if not more, from the get-go.

“I think actually she probably should’ve been paid that originally in the first place and I think everyone’s taken a long, hard look at themselves and gone, ‘Here’s where we went wrong and can we go forward and make it right?’” he said.

“The problem is it happened too late,” he said. “She’s the queen for God’s sake. It’s ridiculous.”

This article originally appeared in Page Six.