Last week it was reported that HBO, who make shows such as 'Game of Thrones', Westworld, Silicon Valley and Girls, has closed all of its gender pay gaps. It's frustrating to discover that even the biggest actors in the world still have to face institutionalized sexism like this, but at least a company as big as HBO is dealing with it.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, president of programming Casey Bloys said the Time's Up movement led to a systematic review of pay across all of their shows. In fact, he said the move was inspired by both the Time's Up movement and their own Reese Witherspoon, who stars in and produces the hit series Big Little Lies.
Bloys explained:
"One of the things that’s come out of thinking about the movement and some conversations with Reese, who's really at the forefront, is something we've done recently.
"We've proactively gone through all of our shows—in fact, we just finished our process where we went through and made sure that there were no inappropriate disparities in pay; and where there were, if we found any, we corrected it going forward.
"And that’s is a direct result of the Time's Up movement."
However, we know that there was definitely one show that didn't need to be adjusted. In Game of Thrones, actors are divided into various 'tiers' when it comes to salary, but each tier holds actresses and actors at the same level. As part of an investigation into television salaries conducted last year, Variety figured out who is in Tier A and what they make.
Among this top tier is Emilia Clarke (who plays Daenerys), Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime), Lena Headey (Cersei) and Peter Dinklage (Tyrion).
When you look at those names it's pretty clear - they are all the most important characters in the ongoing story and your typical fan-favorites.
According to Variety, the above all make $500,000 per episode and have been at this level since the beginning of season six. However, this pales in comparisons to some shows.
The Big Bang Theory is so popular (don't ask me how) that each cast member - Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, and Jim Parsons - makes an incredible $900,000 per episode.
Game of Thrones' highest salaries are closer to the cast of ABC's Modern Family, showing the big difference between TV drama and comedy.
In the realm of drama, Kevin Spacey was also paid $500,000 per episode for House of Cards, a paycheque he definitely won't be cashing in anymore. Ellen Pompeo, the lead in Grey's Anatomy, recently negotiated a deal to make over $575,000 per episode and detailed her advice on how to make ask for a pay rise, something everyone can learn a little something from.
The Thrones cast signed their contracts for the final seasons back in 2014, so the tiers may be a little different than expected. In the years since, actresses like Sophie Turner have boomed with her appearance in the X-Men movies, meaning she might have negotiated a better deal if it were done today.
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