June 19, 2026
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The truth is coming.

Emilia Clarke finally clarified viral rumors about the staggering paychecks she and her fellow “Game of Thrones” cast members received filming the hit HBO show.

More than a decade after reports surfaced claiming the co-stars each earned $300,000 per episode, the actress insisted to Variety that they “didn’t earn that much.”

Emilia Clarke shut down “Game of Thrones” salary rumors in a Variety interview published Friday.
The actress (pictured above in September 2023) confirmed cast members “didn’t earn [as] much” as reports said. AFP via Getty Images

In an interview published Friday, Clarke asked, “Can you imagine? I’d have been driving a couple of Porsches!”

The 39-year-old, who played Daenerys Targaryen, did not elaborate further on how “wildly exaggerated” the number was.

She also neglected to speak to Variety’s 2017 report that the numbers were as high as $500,000 each episode.

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The series premiered in 2011 and ran for eight seasons before wrapping in 2019.

Reports surfaced in 2014 that Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen, and her co-stars made $300,000 per episode.
By 2017, the reported number had gone up to $500,000.

In addition to Clarke, the show starred Kit Harington, Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and more.

Prior to the finale, Clarke made it clear she was “always paid the same amount as” her male co-stars.

“It was my first job and I was not discriminated against because I was a woman, in my paycheck,” the Emmy nominee noted during a 2018 interview at a Cannes Film Festival screening.

That same year, court documents in Coster-Waldau’s legal battle with his former manager revealed he made $1.07 million per episode “for at least six episodes” of the final season.

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“Can you imagine?” the Emmy nominee asked. “I’d have been driving a couple of Porsches!” Helen Sloan/HBO
She did not clarify the actual amount.

Sophie Turner, meanwhile, was reported to be making $175,000 — which she addressed in a 2019 sitdown with Harper’s Bazaar.

“Kit got more money than me, but he had a bigger storyline,” the “Dark Phoenix” star, 30, said at the time. “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 Friday’s interview, Clarke shared her struggle “to understand” the cast’s “Game of Thrones” fame.

“You realize it’s just a formula: The less you’re on TV, the less famous you are,” she explained. “It comes and it goes.”

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Elsewhere in the interview, Clarke (pictured above in September 2019) addressed the fame, which “comes and goes.” Getty Images
Clarke (pictured above on May 15) also reflected on her near-fatal brain aneurysms. Jordan Peck|Getty Images

Clarke also opened up about “cheat[ing] death” by surviving multiple brain aneurysms, which she recently spoke about on the “How to Fail” podcast.

“It became this thing where I just couldn’t look anyone in the eye,” she said earlier this month. “It just cuts you off from the outside world because you’re walking around knowing that your body has failed you.”

The near-fatal health scares in 2011 and 2013, notably, took place while Clarke was filming “Game of Thrones.”

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