big bucks

Meryl Streep Will Make $825,000 an Episode for Her TV Work, Which Is More Than the Gilmore Girls’ Big Payday

Take that, Lorelai! Photo: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

Thanks to the wonky economics of Peak TV, film stars can expect to haul in massive salaries for their TV work. And of course, there’s one famous film actress who’s commanding a salary that towers over (most of) the rest: Meryl Streep is set to earn $825,000 per episode of the J.J. Abrams mini-series The Nix, which hasn’t yet found a network, according to The Hollywood Reporter. For perspective, that’s more than Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel’s massive payday of $750,000 per episode on Netflix’s Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Elsewhere in THR’s write-up, we learn that Robert De Niro is getting $750,000 for each of the 20 episodes of his David O. Russell Amazon series, which has a $7 million per episode budget, and that Amazon is also spending $70 million on Matthew Weiner’s upcoming eight-episode mini-series. But don’t worry, leads on established shows are still making bank, too. Norman Reedus and Andrew Lincoln bring in $550,000 and $650,000 respectively per episode of The Walking Dead seasons seven and eight, the A-tier of the Game of Thrones cast — Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau — closed a deal to get $1.1 million per episode of the last two seasons of the show, while, as has been widely reported, The Big Bang Theory stars get $1 million an episode. So yes, Meryl money is a lot, but it’s not Kaley Cuoco money. TV is crazy!

Meryl Streep Is Making $825K an Episode on TV