Sienna Miller revealed the sexist response an “extremely powerful” Broadway producer once gave her when she demanded equal pay.
The British actor told British Vogue in an interview published Wednesday that the producer, whom she didn’t name, told her to “fuck off.”
Miller said she was paid “less than half” of what her male co-star earned for a play she declined to name. She has starred on Broadway twice, in 2009’s “After Miss Julie” and 2014’s “Cabaret,” according to IndieWire.
“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 told British Vogue. “They just said, ‘Well, fuck off then.’”
Miller said she didn’t “want to be mean” by naming names, but that the abrupt conversation was a “pivotal moment.” She said she initially felt “embarrassed” but later realized she had “every right to be equally subsidized for the work that I would have done.”
The actor got her start in 2004 with supporting roles in “Alfie” and “Layer Cake.” She is now following up her recent Netflix success in “Anatomy of a Scandal” with Apple TV+’s climate change drama “Extrapolations.”
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Miller told British Vogue that executives these days are “shitting their pants” when a female actor says she isn’t comfortable, but that she envies younger actors who “have the word ‘no’ in their language in a way that I didn’t” during the 2000s and 2010s.
She said her co-star Chadwick Boseman, on the other hand, broke the Hollywood mold in a big way when he reallocated part of his “21 Bridges” salary to Miller before he died of colon cancer in 2020.
“It is unfathomable to imagine another man in that town behaving that graciously or respectfully,” Miller told British Vogue. “It was about the most astounding thing that I’ve experienced. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. He said, ‘You’re getting paid what you deserve, and what you’re worth.’”