While she rarely appears on screen during the final season of “Game of Thrones,” this star has been widely rewarded for her work in the hit series…
It’s simply Lena Headey, the famous interpreter of Cersei Lannister! The iconic character had one of the biggest influences on the show’s plot and was the puppeteer of some of this universe’s greatest tragedies. One of the main and constant antagonists of the series, Cersei – who is in the top 3 most hated TV characters of all time – has constantly oscillated between good and evil, and it is no surprise that The actress who plays this deeply complex character was generously compensated for her work.
According to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, the five main actors, Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau went to the studio to re-negotiate their earnings just before season 7 of the show and got between $500,000 and $600,000 per episode at the time. According to Deadline, the previous major re-negotiation of their contract dates back to 2014: $300,000 per episode for the five actors before season 6. As for the 8th and final season, they would have earned the sum of 1.2 million of dollars per episode according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter in October 2018. That means they would have raked in around $7.2 million for a season of just six episodes.
For comparison, Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) and Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark) would have earned $175,000 per episode for the last season, according to the DailyMail and Indie Wire.
LENA HEADEY’S SALARY TO THE MINUTE
Looking a little closer and doing some math, Fox News calculated how much Lena Headey would have earned per minute in the final season of Game of Thrones which has a total running time of 434 minutes spread over six episodes. The actress only appears in three of them and appears on screen for a total of 25 minutes. That brings his total to $144,000 earned per minute on screen.
It should be noted, however, that the actress was obviously not paid on this basis, since she worked much more than 25 minutes, with filming extending over entire days. This, as well as the fact that many scenes are deleted from the final cut of any project, means that his work on the season is much more important than what we saw on screen – which would therefore justify such a sum.
Game of Thrones is currently streaming on Prime Video via Warner Pass.