“Game of Thrones” is the biggest show on TV and the series is about to air its final episode ever this upcoming Sunday.
The HBO fantasy show has made its five lead actors – Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) – not only household names but incredibly wealthy as well.
[SPOILER ALERTS!]
Surprisingly, Headey’s evil Queen Cersei was hardly featured in Season 8 before her demise in Episode 5, but that didn’t affect her pay at all. In fact, her salary per minute of screen time is stunning.
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Season 8 has a total running time of 432 minutes and Headey has only appeared in about 25 minutes of it across three episodes.
Her salary for the final season was reportedly around $1.2 million per episode along with the other four lead actors, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
So, after converting the numbers, Headey brought in around $48,000 per minute of screen time. It should also be noted that Headey obviously did more than 25 minutes. Many extra scenes and dialogue are cut in the editing room and reshoots happen quite often.
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But even Headey admitted she didn’t do as much in “Thrones” final season as previous seasons. She told radio host Chris Evans she worked about 15 days this time around and stayed primarily in Belfast on a sound stage.
To put that into perspective, “The Long Night” episode which featured the living fighting the dead at Winterfell, took 55 nights to shoot and used hundreds of extras besides the main cast members.
