'Gilmore Girls' Star Lauren Graham Among The Highest Paid TV Artists
A report by Variety has revealed the per-episode fees earned by TV artists, and on top are stars from Big Bang Theory and Gilmore Girls who draw monster pay packets
The information was gathered by conducting a survey of "actors, executives, attorneys, agents, managers, and other representatives" to get an understanding of the earnings that TV artists and personalities get from a TV program.
The results are split into three categories : comedy, drama, and reality/news, and top names are not really a surprise
Comedy has the following top three: Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, and Jonny Galecki from Big Bang Theory with each drawing $1 million per episode. Dwayne Johnson is placed third with $400,000 for his role in Ballers. And the fifth place is taken by Drew Barrymore for her role in Santa Clarita Diet drawing $350,000 per episode.
Within Drama, Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel for Gilmore Girls at placed on top, each getting $750,000 per episode of the four-part Netflix revival, and in the third place is Mark Harmon who draws $525,000 for NCIS. Others in the top 5 ranking are Kevin Spacey who nets $500,000 per episode for House of Cards and Peter Dinklage who gets the same amount for Game of Thrones.
The reality/news segment has Judge Judy reigning with a massive $47 million as her annual pay packet, which works out to around $US180,000 per episode. Matt Lauer gets $22-25 million for the Today show and Ellen DeGeneres is at the third place with $20 million for her show.
TeenVogue notes that many of the top stars are women which is an encouraging sign towards redressing the acknowledged gender gap problem in Hollywood, but also is a nod towards the prominent role women play in American television.
However as pointed out by Variety, the "eye-popping" salary levels of the stars heightens the gap between them and the supporting actors. These numbers of course omits all the other sources of income like endorsements or licensing.
