House of Cards star Robin Wright discloses the excuse studio bosses gave for paying her less than Kevin Spacey

Pair starred opposite each other in Netflix hit from 2013 until Spacey’s firing in 2017

Robin Wright has revealed the excuse she was given by studio bosses for getting paid less than Kevin Spacey for House of Cards.

Wright famously threatened studio bosses with going public unless they agreed to equal pay.

In a new interview, she told The Telegraph: “I had learned that whoever was more popular gets paid more. And I thought, ‘OK, understandable,’ but after a bit of investigatory work I went back and said, ‘Actually the algorithms say this, so why am I not getting the same amount again?’ And you know what the answer was? ‘Well, you haven’t won an Academy Award.’”

While Wright has not been nominated for any Oscars, Spacey has won two. One for his performance The Usual Suspects in 1996 and one for American Beauty in 1999.

Asked whether she believes the same situation with pay would occur today, Wright said: “I still don’t know if I can believe what I’m being told. It’s still a man’s world, because they may tell you that you’re getting the same as your male co-star, but they could be lying through their teeth. So that is at the top of the list of things to change.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Wright discussed the 2017 sexual harassment scandal involving Kevin Spacey and his firing from the show, which ran from 2013 to 2018.