Diana Rigg has some thoughts on Game of Thrones, equal pay & feminism
Dame Diana Rigg has an excellent new interview with The Daily Beast. Rigg is currently starring on Game of Thrones as Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns. Rigg is 76 years old, and it sometimes feels like she’s having the time of her life on GoT – she’s like the Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey, a salty-tongued truth-teller and shade-thrower. You can read Rigg’s full interview here – she talks a lot about GoT and feminism, amongst other subjects. Some highlights:
Filming the scene with Littlefinger in the brothel: “I loved that! I thought I’d have a photograph taken and use it as a birthday card. There were broken dildos all over the floor—ceramic dildos. At my age, shock was a long way off.”
The rape of Sansa Stark: “I think people just don’t like to be confronted with that sort of reality, and obviously react. But the fact of the matter is it does go on—not least of which in Africa and places of war. Wherever there’s a war, there’s rape.”
Demanding a higher salary on The Avengers in the 1960s: “They painted me as a mercenary person, which I wasn’t being at all, I just wanted parity. I thought it was ridiculous that I was being paid less than a cameraman, and I wanted to shame them. And I did.”
She didn’t want to be the face of second-wave feminism: “They approached me, and by that time they were very, very politicized, and quite honestly, I’ve always thought it was a question of money, largely. You can’t actually legislate what goes on in people’s minds and their attitudes, but you certainly can legislate for parity where pay and salaries are concerned. In the tennis world, for example, Billie Jean King did the most wonderful battle against the inequalities that were happening there, and got a lot of respect for it. If you’re earning equal pay to a man you get respect. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Everything else follows. And if a woman has her own money and is in a relationship, she’s free to do exactly what she wants, and doesn’t have to answer to the man.”
1960s London: “FUN with a capital F-U-N. There were quite a few wild times. I remember Paul McCartney arriving on my doorstep quite out of the blue. He had their latest record, Sgt. Pepper’s. He just arrived, said he wanted to meet me, and gave me this record and it was absolutely charming… and that was it!”
You know how some people are obsessed with World War II or the Civil War or the Jazz Age or whatever? For me, that’s London in the 1960s. If I could go back to any place and time, I would want to see London in the ‘60s. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, all of the models and actresses and artists… it just seems like that was such a cool moment. As for Rigg’s thoughts on feminism and everything else… I kind of agree with her. Oh, and she says she gets along really well with all of the younger ladies on GoT and they all teasingly call her “Dame.”
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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