Miriam Margolyes has revealed that she turned down a Marvel role because they refused to pay her the £1 million she requested.
The Harry Potter actor didn’t budge when it came to negotiating her salary to play a witch in the upcoming Agatha TV show starring Kathryn Hahn, a spin-off of the TV miniseries WandaVision starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany.
In her new memoir, Oh Miriam! Stories from an Extraordinary Life, the British actor briefly recalled turning down a Marvel role, before elaborating further in an interview with news.com.au.
“They contacted me and said, ‘we’re doing a story about witches’. I thought, ’oh god, not witches again, because I’ve done that with Harry Potter,” she said.
The Call The Midwife star added that she was further put off by the filming location. “I don’t like America and I didn’t want to be in Georgia for four months,” she said.
“So I just said, ’well, I want a million pounds and they said, ‘you can have half a million’, and I said, ‘no, I don’t want to do it’, so it just stopped.”
The famously outspoken star added that “really it’s a story about my own greed rather than anything else.”
As for her reluctance to return to a role that called back to her Harry Potter character Professor Pomona Sprout, Miriam recently declared that she’s concerned for adults of the beloved wizarding world franchise.”
“I worry about Harry Potter fans,” she admitted to New Zealand’s 1News, claiming: “They should be over that by now.”
During her recent cover interview with British Vogue, the Bafta winning star also said that “for me Harry Potter wasn’t important”, adding: “I was very glad I got the part and I enjoyed being in it and meeting all the people, but it’s not Charles Dickens.”
It’s not just Marvel that the actor has turned down, with the actor having recently opened up about the reason she said no to I’m A Celebrity.
“I’ve got class, love. I’m not doing that,” she shared on Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett’s podcast Dish.
During the interview, she also confessed that she “only wrote” her new memoir because “they offered me a lot of money”.