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Jessie Buckley may be an Oscar-winning star with box office power, but the Irish actor will be taking a significant pay cut for her return to the London stage.
The Hamnet actor, 36, will be paid just £140 a day for starring in new play Afterbirth at the Royal Court Theatre in 2028 about the “weird, funny, brutal reality of birth and parenthood”.
Buckley, who took home the Best Actress award earlier this year at the Oscars, Golden Globes, and Baftas, will receive the same “company rate” as every other actor who performs at the Royal Court, the theatre’s artistic director David Byrne confirmed to The Times.
The rate, based on West End union agreements, suggests that Buckley will be paid £971 per week, in which she would give eight performances.
It is a stark change in salary for the actor who industry experts estimate can command up to £4.5m per film, according to the publication.
Buckley’s forthcoming stint at the Royal Court will come amid a star-studded tenure for Byrne. Since he took over in 2024, the theatre has welcomed John Lithgow as Roald Dahl in Giant, Gary Oldman in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and Tilda Swinton who reprised her role in the solo show Man to Man, having originated the part in 1987.
Lithgow, Oldman and Swinton would have performed for the “standard company rate” in its 400-seat main space.
Nina Segal’s Afterbirth will be the first time that Buckley has performed in London since 2022, when she starred in the lead role of Sally Bowles in Rebecca Frecknall’s immersive revival of Cabaret opposite Eddie Redmayne. Both won Olivier awards for their performances.
Bryne told The Times that he immediately thought of Buckley after reading the Afterbirth script, stating: “The play is a perfect mix of being a five-course meal for an actor but is also a piece that balances a very human story with a quite experimental, interesting theatrical form.”
The actor “really responded” to the script, according to Byrne, who recalled the cast workshop as “one of the most extraordinary readings of a play” he had experienced in his 20-year career.
Buckley is a new mother herself, having welcomed her first child with husband Freddy Sorensen last year.
Also featured in the theatre’s newly announced 2027 season are The Crown’s Tobias Menzies in The Apology, and Juliet Stevenson in The Briar Patch, directed by Byrne himself.
For the first time in the theatres’ 74-year history, its neighbours, the Chelsea Pensioners, retired soldiers who live at the nearby Royal Hospital Chelsea, will be collaborating on a new play titled War Face.
“Not only have they absolutely leapt at the chance to be on stage at the Royal Court but they also asked what has taken us so long to ask them,” Byrne said.
