Sienna Miller tried to push for equal pay on a recent project, but got pushed back hard by an “extremely powerful” producer.
The “Anatomy of a Scandal” star didn’t name names, but said that it was when she was starring in a Broadway production. As Variety notes, she’s starred in exactly two of those, “Cabaret” in 2014 and “After Miss Julie” in 2009.
The comments came in an interview with British Vogue, where she shared that she was “offered less than half” what her male co-star was going to get per week for the play.
“I said to the producer, who was extremely powerful, ‘It’s not about money, it’s about fairness and respect,’ thinking they’d come back and say, ‘Of course, of course,'” Miller recalled.
“But they didn’t,” she continued “They just said, ‘Well f— off then.'” In choosing not to name the production or producer, Miller simply said, “I don’t want to be mean,” but it did go ahead.
Miller has come to see the experience as a “pivotal moment” in her life, telling the outlet, “I realized I had every right to be equally subsidized for the work that I would have done.”
It was a few years after both of the Broadway plays she starred in that Miller again found herself in a salary disparity discussion, but this time it was her co-star himself, the late Chadwick Boseman, who evened the scales by taking a pay cut for their 2019 film, “21 Bridges.”
In an interview with Empire after Boseman’s passing, Miller said that the “Black Panther” star told her, “You’re getting paid what you deserve, and what you’re worth.”
“In the aftermath of this I’ve told other male actor friends of mine that story and they all go very very quiet and go home and probably have to sit and think about things for a while,” she continued.
Now, she’s so proud of the evolving landscape for young performers in the industry, saying that actors “ten years younger have the word ‘no’ in their language in a way that I didn’t.”
They have the power to say they feel uncomfortable “in front of any form of executive,” and they’re taken seriously. “You’re included in a conversation about your level of comfort,” she said. “It’s changed everything.”
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