Young Sheldon Cast Salary is a Far Cry From Big Bang Theory Paychecks
Despite the spin-off's success, its cast members bring home far less money than the original show's actors.
The Big Bang Theory was one of the defining sitcoms of its era, revitalizing the stale genre and allowing even the strangest characters to get their time in the spotlight on primetime television.
With astronomical ratings, CBS didn't mind paying the core cast insane amounts of money per episode. But even though the spin-off based on Sheldon Cooper's younger years turned out to be a huge success as well, the network decided not to spoil the cast with big salaries, making the comparison between Young Sheldon and TBBT's paychecks seem unfair.
While Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki, Kunal Nayyar, and Simon Helberg began their tenure on the project with fairly average salaries, by the show's final seasons, they were earning a whopping $1 million each for an episode, bringing home more than $20 million for a season.
And though Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch joined the main cast much later, they still earned huge sums of money too, signing contracts for $425,000 per episode. It looks like CBS wasted more money on the actors than on the production of the show itself!
Since its premiere in 2017, Young Sheldon has proved to be the perfect continuation of the main show, but surprisingly, the actors' salaries don't reflect that.
Iain Armitage, who plays the young version of Sheldon, began his time on the comedy series as a pretty little kid, earning a respectable $30,000 per episode. By season three, his salary had risen to $32,500, and now he reportedly earns close to $50,000 for a 20-minute episode.
That's a nice sum, but a far cry from the numbers the cast of TBBT was making, don't you think?
The salaries of Raegan Revord and Montana Jordan are not disclosed, but fans are pretty sure that the supporting actors make much less than Armitage, which suggests that CBS decided to save money on the cast of Young Sheldon.
Or perhaps, they just don't have as much money to waste, as all of the network's earnings went into the pockets of Parsons and company?