Viola Davis' How to Get Away Salary Will Make Your Eyes Water
When How to Get Away with Murder premiered in 2014, it instantly turned into a Thursday-night ratings machine for ABC, slotting neatly alongside Scandal and Grey's Anatomy.
The first season averaged around 15 million viewers an episode, and the heat around the show quickly translated into a financial windfall for its star, Viola Davis.
Over six seasons, running until 2020, Davis collected awards across the board: an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama, an AFI award for TV Program of the Year, and a People's Choice Award for Favorite Actress. By then, her paycheck had soared to match her reputation.
The salary breakdown looks like this:
- By 2016, just two years into the run, Variety reported Davis was pulling in $250,000 per episode.
- That sum put her on par with Kerry Washington's pay on Scandal at the time, even though Davis had joined the network lineup two years later.
- Industry insiders believe Davis' later HTGAWM seasons could have pushed her pay to $300,000–$450,000 per episode.
The numbers don't reach the stratospheric $1 million-an-episode salaries enjoyed by The Big Bang Theory cast, but Davis was firmly in the top tier of TV earners, ranking alongside Sofia Vergara and Kaley Cuoco on the highest-paid actresses list.
Her television success helped push her net worth to an estimated $25 million — far below Meryl Streep's reported $160 million, but still a remarkable rise considering the pay inequities Davis herself has spoken about.
In a 2018 conversation with journalist Tina Brown, Davis vented her frustration:
"I have a career that's probably comparable to Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Sigourney Weaver. They had the same path as me, and yet I am nowhere near them. Not as far as money, not as far as job opportunities, nowhere close to it. But I have to get on that phone and people say, 'You're a Black Meryl Streep…There is no one like you.' Okay, then if there's no one like me, you think I'm that, you pay me what I'm worth. You give me what I'm worth."
She doubled down:
"I got the Oscar, I got the Emmy, I got the two Tonys, I've done Broadway, I've done off-Broadway, I've done TV, I've done film, I've done all of it."
Outside of HTGAWM, Davis' résumé includes The Help, Prisoners, Get on Up, Lila & Eve with Jennifer Lopez, Widows, and Suicide Squad. Each role built the platform that allowed her to demand the kind of per-episode checks that make eyes water — even if she's still waiting for Hollywood to fully pay her what she's worth.