07/02/2025
They say I’m difficult!
Diana Rigg once slapped a director so hard, the entire set went silent.
It wasn’t in the script. It wasn’t even during a scene. But he’d made a lewd remark — loud enough for the crew to hear — and Diana, without flinching, delivered the kind of slap that leaves more than a sting. Then she walked off set. No yelling. No apology. Just elegance and fury in equal measure.
That was Rigg. Feminine, yes. But never docile.
Long before Game of Thrones crowned her the Queen of Thorns, she was cracking jaws (and gender norms) as Emma Peel — the leather-clad, judo-flipping spy who redefined what a woman could be on television. But what the cameras didn’t show was the quiet rebellion beneath the eyeliner. Rigg insisted on equal pay. She called out chauvinism on set. She mocked the industry that tried to box her into corsets and side roles.
When she left The Avengers, it wasn’t for a bigger paycheck — it was for dignity. “I’m not going to play a puppet,” she once said.
But she paid a price. Roles dried up. Critics called her “difficult.” In truth, she was just honest.
Later in life, she reinvented herself as a stage legend — commanding Shakespeare one night and roasting Lannisters the next. And even as her health declined, she showed up. Sharp-tongued. Flawless. Fierce.
Diana Rigg didn’t just survive the boys’ club. She smirked at it, stole the spotlight, and poured a drink.
🕊 How many women were branded “difficult” simply for demanding the respect men received by default?