"Grey's" Cast Banks Green
As if McDreamy wasn't enough of a catch already.
Fresh off a ratings-dominating second season, the cast of Grey's Anatomy has a new milestone to celebrate: a bigger payday.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the show's principal cast members have each pocketed a cool $200,000 bonus from Touchstone Television as thanks for a timeslot well done.
Ellen Pompeo (Meredith), Patrick Dempsey (Derek), James Pickens Jr. (Chief Webber), T.R. Knight (George), Sandra Oh (Cristina), Katherine Heigl (Izzie), Chandra Wilson (Dr. Bailey), Isaiah Washington (Preston), Justin Chambers (Alex) and Kate Walsh (Addison) were the lucky recipients of the sizeable one-time payout, which in addition to bumping the actors into a new tax bracket, likely puts to rest viewer concerns that doctors Addison Sheperd and Izzie Stevens were, at least from the looks of the cliff-hanging season finale, perhaps not long for season three.
However, per the trade mag, the generous payout likely did not come simply from the kindness of the studio's heart, but rather was an attempt to pay a little now, save a lot later.
Touchstone TV, which is keeping mum on both the reported bonuses and their intentions, is likely trying to head off the actors requests for bigger paydays and stop the Thursday-bound Seattle Grace medicos from attempting to renegotiate their original series deals in the wake of the meteoric ratings windfall.
It's a tactic that appears to be working for the Disney-owned studio.
Just a few months into its premiere season, Touchstone dished out $250,000 bonuses to the four leading ladies of Desperate Housewives?Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria and Felicity Huffman?with the slightly lesser Wisteria Lane residents?Nicollette Sheridan and James Denton?receiving slightly lesser, but still sizeable, pay hikes.
The show producers again kept mum on the widely-reported bonuses, saying "it is against studio policy to comment on the salary of our actors."
It, however, was apparently not against the actors' policies, as the monster payday came relatively soon after Sheridan expressed dismay at her paltry, by Hollywood standards, salary, griping to People magazine that she was "the poorest actress on television."
Earlier this year, Touchstone again searched their couch cushions, scrounging up enough change to considerably boost the bank accounts of the cast of another of their hit shows, Lost.
The studio offered the original island-dwelling cast members a salary hike to $80,000 per episode in exchange for the actors extending their Other-fighting, number-punching duties for another year.
The surviving original actors, including Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Naveen Andrews, Dominic Monaghan, Terry O'Quinn, Jorge Garcia, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim and Harold Perrineau Jr., were previously making in the range of $20,000-$40,000 per episode.
Though in that situation, the studio did appear to play favorites, tacking on an additional $250,000 one-time bonus to the show's nominal lead, Matthew Fox.
And time will tell if the cast of Grey's Anatomy lives up to the expectations of their bigger payday.
The medical drama takes its new place as ABC's Thursday night anchor, moving into the 9 p.m. timeslot starting this September.
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