Jessie Buckley has an Academy Award and can reportedly command as much as £4.5 million per film. For her next project, however, the acclaimed actor will be working for a considerably smaller fee.
The 36-year-old Hamnet star, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for the film, is set to appear in Afterbirth, a new play at London’s Royal Court Theatre.
Royal Court artistic director David Byrne confirmed that Buckley will be paid the same “company rate” as the rest of the cast, in line with West End union agreements.
Buckley will perform in all eight weekly shows during the play’s limited engagement and will receive £971, according to The Times.
Since Byrne took over as artistic director in 2024, stars including John Lithgow, Tilda Swinton and Gary Oldman have also been paid the standard rate.
Byrne said the 400-seat theatre had built “real momentum” and represented a “tantalising proposition” for actors, directors, designers and, above all, playwrights looking to devote their talents to an entirely original production. “It is untrodden snow,” he said.
The arrangement stands in sharp contrast to reports of other West End deals involving Hollywood stars, some of whom have allegedly earned more than £20,000 a week.
Jessie Buckley, 36, who won the Best Actress Oscar for Hamnet, is set to star in Afterbirth at London’s Royal Court Theatre
The Hamnet star will take to the West End stage in Nina Segal’s new play Afterbirth
According to The Times, Byrne said he believed Buckley was interested in returning to theatre and felt he had identified the kind of material that would “excite her”.
The Royal Court’s forthcoming programme will also feature the European premiere of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Broadway transfer Purpose, alongside six new plays receiving their world premieres.
Written by Nina Segal, Afterbirth has been billed as a “funny, furious and unflinching” examination of life after childbirth and the realities of parenthood.
Directed by Maria Aberg, the production will premiere on January 15, 2028, and run through February 26 of that year.
The Royal Court is promising a bold season of new writing, combining established names with emerging voices across its 2027 programme.
One of the season’s headline productions is The Apology, a world premiere starring Emmy Award winner Tobias Menzies, known for portraying the late Prince Philip in The Crown, alongside V, formerly known as Eve Ensler.
The drama follows V as she summons her dead father to face the abuse he inflicted on her during childhood, confronting questions of sexual violence, justice and whether redemption is possible. It runs from March 19 to April 24.
The theatre will also stage the European premiere of Purpose, the Tony Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
The play centres on a powerful African-American political family whose carefully constructed public image starts to collapse when long-hidden secrets come to light. It runs from January 16 to February 27.
Olivier Award-winning actor Juliet Stevenson will headline The Briar Patch, a domestic thriller by Ciara Elizabeth Smyth.
After a scandal shakes her community and a family friend is arrested, Dara begins to reassess everyone around her. Byrne will direct the production, which runs from May 14 to June 26.
The season will also explore the experiences of British Army veterans in War Face, a new play by Stage Debut Award winner Georgie Dettmer. Developed with serving and former soldiers in partnership with the Chelsea Pensioners, the production is directed by Jess Edwards and runs from April 22 to May 1.
Tobias Menzies will star in The Apology at the Royal Court Theatre next year
Benjamin Kuffour’s Working Men follows a quantity surveyor, a building contractor and a project manager who arrive at a council estate expecting an ordinary site visit. Instead, the day threatens to transform each of their lives. The play receives its world premiere from June 4 to July 10, 2027.
Alex Medland’s professional debut, We’re Gonna Kill Billy, offers a darker comic turn. It follows four teenage girls who plot to kidnap a billionaire’s grandson in an attempt to halt a marina development that endangers local wildlife.
Aneesha Srinivasan, an associate director at the Royal Court, will direct the eco-thriller, which runs from February 18 to March 27.
Away from the main season, the theatre will revive its week-long open-submission festival for a fourth time, spotlighting emerging writers chosen from the more than 3,000 new plays it reads annually.
The Young Playwrights Award festival will also return for its third edition from July 8 to 10, presenting work by writers aged between 13 and 18 from across the UK.
For Byrne, the season represents an ambitious new phase for the Royal Court, coming three years after he became artistic director and following the theatre’s 70th anniversary celebrations.
“I almost can’t believe it’s ours,” he said, describing the programme as a gathering of “knotty, original, adventurous new plays” that could belong nowhere quite as naturally as the Royal Court.
