Despite being the highest rated drama on television, the cast of The Walking Dead a ‘paid a pittance’ compared to their Hollywood peers.
Andrew Lincoln has been earning $90,000 per episode of the Zombie drama, while Norman Reedus (who plays Daryl Dixon) was being paid $80,000 an episode.
I wouldn’t personally complain about earning $90k an episode, but their pay is a huge contrast with the salaries of actors on much lower-rated shows such as Sarah Wayne Callies who makes $175,000 per episode of the Prison Break reboot.
Uproxx investigated the reasons why two of today’s biggest TV stars are making so little, citing the hug ensemble cast as a potential pressure on AMC’s wallet as they can’t afford to pay everyone.
However this point is unlikely to be true because the five biggest stars of Game of Thrones, a show with an immense cast, are paid half a million dollars per episode.
Interestingly it appears to be the bloody nature of the show which means that the producers can kill off any cast members at will…so asking for a raise is pretty risky business.
Killing off cast members in the series not only saves the show money, but boosts ratings. It has become an effective method of managing salaries in shows with large casts.
Kaley Cuoco and Jim Parsons make a staggering $1 million per episode of the Big Bang Theory!
The producers have however now acknowledged that Andrew Lincoln and Daryl Dixon are indispensable to the show and they have given them a huge raise to $550,000 and $650,000 respectively.
They’re up to speed with the Game of Thrones actors, but it seems the lives of the rest of the Walking Dead characters remain in the hands of producers.
