February 28th 2023.
Is there anything that Zendaya cannot do? Reports have recently surfaced indicating that the two-time Emmy Award-winning actress has renegotiated her contract for the show Euphoria, with the Los Angeles Times claiming that she will now make $1 million per episode in the program's upcoming season.
This deal would make Zendaya one of the most highly paid television actors in Hollywood and likely the youngest. She is the star of the HBO Max show Euphoria, where she plays Rue, a young adult struggling with a drug addiction in the wake of her father's death. Moreover, she is also the executive producer for the show, and at 25 she became the youngest person to be nominated for producing, followed by a historic win in 2020 for the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series award. Despite the show having received some mixed reviews due to its depiction of drug use among young people, Zendaya has expressed that her greatest wish for Euphoria is that it can help people heal. "I want you to know that anyone who has loved a Rue or feels like they are a Rue, I want you to know I’m so grateful for your stories, and I carry them with them, and I carry them with her," she said during her acceptance speech in 2022.
The issue of actor payments has been increasingly brought up, particularly concerning the cast of Euphoria. Sydney Sweeney, who co-stars in the show, was quoted in the Hollywood Reporter by GQ as saying, "They don’t pay actors like they used to, and with streamers, you no longer get residuals. The established stars still get paid, but I have to give 5 percent to my lawyer, 10 percent to my agents, 3 percent or something like that to my business manager. I have to pay my publicist every month, and that’s more than my mortgage."
The new one million dollar per episode salary for Zendaya makes her the youngest, highest-paid Black female actor on television. Other actresses who have earned similar salaries include Angela Bassett, who earned $450,000 per episode on FOX's 9-1-1, and Kerry Washington, who earned over $1 million an episode on Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere.
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