If you weren’t feeling broke before, you definitely will now!
Per usual, Variety has published the annual report documenting the per-episode salaries of TV’s top players in Comedy and Drama, as well as the annual salary estimates of reality/news/hosts. It’s pretty insane!
So let’s get to it, shall we?
Related: Katy Perry Reveals Her Biggest Fear About Hosting The VMAs
For the Drama category, Robert De Niro leads the pack by far raking in $775,000 per episode for his untitled Amazon show.
Following behind him bringing in the big bucks are:
— Mark Harmon (NCIS, CBS): $525,000
— Emilia Clarke, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Lena Headey (Game Of Thrones, HBO): $500,000 (each)
— Kevin Costner (Yellowstone, Par): $500,000
— Kevin Spacey (House of Cards, Netflix): $500,000
— Claire Danes (Homeland, Showtime): $450,000
— Ellen Pompeo (Grey’s Anatomy, ABC): $450,000
— William H. Macy (Shameless, Showtime): $350,000
— Emmy Rossum (Shameless, Showtime): $350,000
Other notable mentions are Kerry Washington (Scandal, ABC) with $250,000, Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale, HBO) with $200,000, and Mandy Moore (This Is Us, NBC) with $85,000.
Moving on to Comedy, the cast of Big Bang Theory (think: Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, and Jim Parsons all make a whopping $900,000 per episode! Talk about a big budget, CBS!
Other big players getting top dollar to make us laugh include:
— Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (Ballers, HBO): $650,000
— Mayim Bialik, Melissa Rauch (Big Bang Theory, CBS): $500,000
— Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Ed O’Neill, Eric Stonestreet, Sofia Vergara (Modern Family, ABC): $500,000
— Jeffrey Tambor (Transparent, Amazon): $275,000
— Roseanne Barr, John Goodman (Roseanne, ABC): $275,000
— Sean P. Hayes, Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally (Will & Grace, NBC): $250,000
Honorable mentions: Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep, HBO) with $250,000, Ellie Kemper (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Netflix) with $150,000, and Leah Remini (Kevin Can Wait, CBS) with $125,000.
And finally, here are the estimated annual salaries for all your favorite TV hosts (below)!
— Ellen DeGeneres (The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Syndicated): $50m
— Judith Sheindlin (Judge Judy, Syndicated): $47m
— Matt Lauer (Today, NBC): $25m
— Katy Perry (American Idol, ABC): $25m
— Kelly Ripa (Live With Kelly & Ryan, Syndicated): $22m
— Megyn Kelly (NBC News): $18m
— Robin Roberts (Good Morning America, ABC): $18m
— Jimmy Fallon (The Tonight Show, NBC): $16m
— Stephen Colbert (The Late Show, CBS): $15m
— Jimmy Kimmel (Jimmy Kimmel Live, ABC): $15m
This is a good place to mention that David Letterman is making $12m for his six-episode interview series with Netflix and Ryan Seacrest brings in $15m from Live! and $12m from AI.
Ch-ch-check out the rest of the list HERE!
All about the money, honey!