The Walking Dead's Daryl Dixon Was Paid Almost Twice as Much as Rick Grimes
This shouldn't come as a surprise that for his role in The Walking Dead, Norman Reedus made an absolute fortune… But he also doubled Andrew Lincoln's bag!
No matter what you think about The Walking Dead, it's a show that's going to be remembered for a long time.
This zombie horror series took the world by storm, resurrected the genre (got it?), started quite a few spin-offs, and became one of the most popular TV shows in history. Quite a resume, isn't it?
A show of such scale obviously benefited its lead actors nicely: many of them rose to international fame and started receiving other sweet offers all the while getting paid handsomely for The Walking Dead.
Typically, it's the main character actor that gets the biggest paychecks… Which is not the case with this particular zombie show.
For the majority of The Walking Dead's duration (up until season 9 out of 11, to be exact), the main character was ex-Sheriff Rick Grimes played by Andrew Lincoln.
In his last season, S9, Lincoln was paid $650k per episode which is more than impressive; still, his paycheck wasn't the biggest on the show.
Norman Reedus started his way in The Walking Dead as a secondary character named Daryl Dixon, but thanks to the actor's immense charisma and masterful performance, Dixon quickly became one of the fan favorites.
Reedus became the show's regular actor starting from S2 and was paid $8,500 per episode.
As time passed, his popularity kept growing — and after Andrew Lincoln's leave from The Walking Dead, Norman's Daryl Dixon became the new lead of the show.
Starting from season 10, the actor's paycheck increased to a whopping $1M per episode which presumably resulted in him getting paid around $20M per season!
This alone made Norman Reedus one of the most high-earning TV actors at the time — but apart from this amazing salary, the actor was offered a three-year contract that ensured he'd receive anywhere from $50M to $90M regardless of the show's continuity and whether Daryl Dixon would still be alive or killed off in the series.
That's one hell of a bargain if you ask us… And pretty much anyone else in the world.
Source: StyleCaster