Macall Polay/HBO.
With season 4 of Succession just around the corner, we’re more than ready to check back in with our favorite dysfunctional TV family. In honor of their impending return, we’re talking about that which the Roy family loves best: money, and lots of it. These figures may be nothing compared to what Waystar Royco execs pull in, but the cast salaries for season 3 of the HBO hit are still pretty staggering in the world of per-episode TV pay. Read on for how much your favorite actors were paid to be creatively insulted by Brian Cox for an hour each week.
For season 1, each of Succession‘s key players started out on a salary of under $100,000 per episode, according to a Hollywood Reporter source in 2020. But after the success of the show spiked during the pandemic and before season 3 began shooting, there was an opportunity for the cast to renegotiate their fees heading into the third season. The Hollywood Reporter further confirmed that, although some ensemble shows will negotiate their pay as a unit for an upcoming season, the cast of Succession each negotiated their pay individually, in a move that would surely make the Roys and their loved ones proud.
While different levels of success in these negotiations might have bred in-fighting and resentment down the line (also classic Roy), the main cast all appear to have negotiated similar per-episode rates for the 2021 season of the show—except, in a case of life imitating art, Brian Cox, who earned himself a higher rate than the rest.
All the Roy children—Jeremy Strong, who plays Kendall, Kieran Culkin, who plays Roman, Sarah Snook, who plays Siobhan and Alan Ruck, who plays Connor—earned between $300,000 and $350,000 for each episode of Succession season 3. Matthew Mcfadyen, who plays Siobhan’s husband Tom Wambsgans, and his primary scene partner Nicholas Braun, a.k.a. Cousin Greg, earned the same range.
Brian Cox, who plays head media honcho Logan Roy, negotiated the most impressive salary of all: $400,000 to $500,000 for each installment. That’s on par with what Game of Thrones stars Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke were making by the final season: Variety reported in 2019 that each star had a per-episode payout of $500,000.
Season 4 of Succession will premiere on March 26, and the show’s popularity has shown no signs of slowing. For the upcoming season, the cast may have even outranked those Game of Thrones numbers—and if they make it all the way to a season 8 like Game of Thrones did, there’s no telling how high these figures could climb.