As far as Jason Isaacs is concerned, the price of a stay at “The White Lotus” was relatively cheap.
In a wide-ranging interview with Vulture, “The White Lotus” season three star confirmed a previous report that the entire cast is paid the same amount — $40,000 an episode.
“That’s absolutely true,” Isaacs, who played Timothy Ratliff in the Thailand-set season, told Vulture. “Generally actors don’t talk about pay in public because it’s ridiculously disproportionate to what we do — putting on makeup and funny voices — and just upsets the public. But compared to what people normally get paid for big television shows, that’s a very low price.”
Isaacs, a veteran actor with credits ranging from “Black Hawk Down” to “Harry Potter,” said he’s not upset that he was paid the same amount as less established talent on the show because, as he put it, “I never work for the money.”
“I mean, I’ve done all right,” he continued. “People will think I have huge stockpiles of money but sadly, what I’ve done rather immaturely is expand my outgoings to match my incomings and pretty much spent everything I’ve earned over the years.”
In an April interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “The White Lotus” producer David Bernad revealed the show’s ethos regarding casting: “They get paid the same, and we do alphabetical billing, so you’re getting people who want to do the project for the right reasons.”
Bernad added that the salary is “not negotiable.”
In the decades since the cast of “Friends” famously negotiated to each be paid $1 million per episode at the height of the show’s success in 2002, the salaries of cast members on popular TV series have ballooned.
The cast of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” will reportedly make between $6 million and $9 million for the show’s upcoming fifth season; main stars of “Game of Thrones” were making six figures per episode by the end of its run on HBO, the same network as “The White Lotus.”
However, none of that seems to bother Isaacs.
“The fact is, we would have paid to be in it,” he told Vulture. “We probably would have given a body part.”
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