Jennifer Aniston’s Salary More Than Jennifer Roberts’ For Their New TV Shows

Amid a stream of A-list female celebrities gearing up to star in an array of new TV shows, a recent report revealed how much actresses like Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon will be charging for their respective roles on the small screen.

According to a Variety report, Aniston will be charging $1.1 million per episode for her untitled upcoming Apple TV project. At the same time, Roberts has signed $600,000 per episode deal with Amazon for the upcoming series “Homecoming.”

Apart from her acting fee, the “Friends” alum was also charging an additional fee owing to her role as a co-producer. Her production house, Echo Films, was listed as a co-producer of her upcoming project.

The same went for Witherspoon, who was charging the same salary as Aniston, excluding her contribution to her untitled Apple TV project as one of the producers through her production firm, Hello Sunshine.

While companies like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, AT&T and Disney funding shows on the small screen meant an abundance of cash flow to attract big celebrities away from silver screen to the television, it also meant the thinning of budget when it came to hiring lower tiered talent.

“I think budgets have gone up just because of the nature of having to produce the best TV show and needing to make more of a splash,” Dawn Steinberg, exec VP of worldwide talent and casting at Sony Pictures Television, said. “We say this to agents: 'If we pay your client that, I'm going to have less money to surround them with really talented, really good actors.”

“If you're shooting in L.A. and an actor wants to stay at home and they're raising a family and they want to send their kids to school here, yeah, they may take less to shoot a show in town. I think it's harder for them to start lowering their fee when they're going to be away for a long time,” she added.

Also changing was the number of shows being dished out by streaming services as compared to traditional viewing platforms. An FX research found among the 520 original scripted series expected to air on TV in 2018, an increasing number of them were going to air on a streaming service.

This might be due to the fact that streaming services grant big stars greater flexibility because they produce seasons of 10, eight or even six episodes in length, while network shows have a typical 22-episode per season slot.

Regardless, higher number of shows in a year also meant competing tooth and nail for networks to hire the stars they wanted for their shows.

“Because there are over 450 shows across all the platforms, I think availability of actors is the most changed issue, which is an amazing problem to have for actors,” said Seth Yanklewitz, exec VP of talent and casting for MGM.