Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Others Pull in Insane Salaries for TV Work
Photos by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty, Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty
TV is apparently where the money gets made, which may explain why Peak TV features so many of our favorite movie stars. Meryl Streep, for example, is making $825,000 an episode for the J.J. Abrams miniseries The Nix, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The Nix has yet to find a network.
Meanwhile, Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel are both getting $750,000 an episode for the Netflix revival Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. THR also reports that Robert De Niro will earn $750,000 per episode for each of the 20 episodes of David O. Russell’s Amazon series, which will have a budget of $7 million per episode. Amazon has also invested $70 million in Matthew Weiner’s forthcoming eight-episode miniseries.
Established TV leads are also doing extremely well. Norman Reedus and Andrew Lincoln are making $550,000 and $650,000 per episode on The Walking Dead, respectively. On Game of Thrones, the A-tier cast, which includes Kit Harington, Lena Headey, Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, are pulling $1.1 million an episode for the show’s final two seasons. The cast of The Big Bang Theory are also earning $1 million an episode, which tells you how valuable Jim Parsons is: he’s worth even more than film goddess Meryl Streep.