Something for the weekend: As blood-thirsty fantasy drama Game of Thrones returns to TV screens this month (April 2019) for its eighth and final season, its leading cast are banking pay cheques of up to $500,000 (£386,182.50) per episode, according to women’s glossy magazine Cosmopolitan.
Analysis by the monthly magazine reveals that warden of the North Jon Snow, played by Kit Harrington, and queen of dragons Daenerys Targaryen, depicted by actor Emilia Clarke, both take home $500,000 for each episode in the season, as do the three Lannister siblings, portrayed by Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
The Stark clan, on the other hand, typically receive $175,000 (£135,163.88) per episode, according to financial and business news title Business Insider. This includes fictional siblings Sansa Stark, Arya Stark and Bran Stark, played by Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams and Isaac Hempstead Wright respectively.
But what do the show’s female stars make of this discrepancy in pay? Turner told Harper’s Bazaar: “Kit got more money than me, but he had a bigger storyline. For the last series, he had something crazy like 70 night shoots and I didn’t have that many. I was like ‘You know what? You keep that money.’”
Clarke, however, has always been level pegging in terms of pay. “On Game of Thrones, I have always been paid the same amount as my male co-stars. It was my first job and I was not discriminated against because I was a woman, in my pay check,” she explained to Variety.
Here at Employee Benefits, we think it is great to see pay parity between some of Game of Thrones’ leading cast members; it certainly proves the Lannisters’ golden reputation for being the wealthiest family in Westeros…
