Emilia Clarke Dismisses 'Game of Thrones' Salary Rumours

Los Angeles: Actress Emilia Clarke has set the record straight on long-standing rumours surrounding the salaries earned by the cast of the hit fantasy series 'Game of Thrones', calling the reported figures "wildly exaggerated", according to Page Six. In a recent interview with Variety, Clarke refuted claims that she and several of her co-stars earned as much as USD 300,000 per episode during the show's run. "We didn't earn that much," Clarke said, dismissing the viral reports that have circulated for years, according to Page Six. Reacting to the reported figure, the actress jokingly added, "Can you imagine? I'd have been driving a couple of Porsches!"

Clarke, who portrayed Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO phenomenon, did not reveal how much the cast actually earned but maintained that the figures published over the years were significantly overstated. The actress also declined to comment on previous reports suggesting that some of the show's leading stars were earning up to USD 500,000 per episode. Game of Thrones premiered in 2011 and ran for eight seasons before concluding in 2019. Alongside Clarke, the series starred Kit Harington, Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Sophie Turner and several others. While discussing pay parity in an earlier interview at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, Clarke had stated that she was treated equally to her male co-stars when it came to compensation. "It was my first job and I was not discriminated against because I was a woman, in my paycheck," she had said, according to Page Six. Salary discussions surrounding the series intensified in 2018 when court documents from a legal dispute involving Nikolaj Coster-Waldau reportedly revealed that the actor earned USD 1.07 million per episode for at least six episodes of the final season.

Meanwhile, Sophie Turner previously addressed reports that she was earning USD 175,000 per episode. In a 2019 interview, the actress explained that Kit Harington's larger paycheck reflected the demands of his role. "Kit got more money than me, but he had a bigger storyline," Turner said. "And 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." Elsewhere in her latest interview, Clarke reflected on the intense fame that came with starring in one of television's most successful shows. "You realise it's just a formula: The less you're on TV, the less famous you are," she said. "It comes and it goes." The actress also spoke about the lasting impact of surviving two brain aneurysms while filming Game of Thrones. Clarke recently revisited the difficult period during an appearance on the How to Fail podcast, where she described how the health scares affected her emotionally, according to Page Six.

"It became this thing where I just couldn't look anyone in the eye," she said. "It just cuts you off from the outside world because you're walking around knowing that your body has failed you." Clarke suffered the near-fatal brain aneurysms in 2011 and 2013, during the early years of filming the globally acclaimed fantasy drama. Despite the challenges, she went on to complete all eight seasons of the series and became one of its most celebrated stars, according to Page Six.