How Much Money Doctor Who's Biggest Stars Got Paid

hello everybody Ellie here for who culture now who here is a little bit like me and is a little bit too nosy for their own good especially when it comes to being very curious about how much money famous actors make you know at the end of the year when you get the list of like the highest paid celebrities in Hollywood and that got me thinking about Doctor Who actors so why don't you join me in taking a look at how much some of the show's biggest stars made and let's kick things off with William hartell so the first op was something of an enigma when he landed on our television screens back in November 1963 we didn't really know who he was whether he was human whether he was alien we didn't even know the name of his home planet that would all come a lot later in the show as he tells Ian and Barbara I don't discuss my private life with strangers and to be honest he's probably right about that stranger danger and all that now the same was actually quite true for the man who portrayed him whose starting salary actually was never disclosed however according to the 1994 first doctor handbook William harau was earning £315 per episode by the end of his run now that's nearly £5,000 in today's money now it's not an exact science as the first doctor season could contain anywhere between 39 to 45 episodes so on average hartel's fee for a season would have been around £13,000 or somewhere in the region of about £200,000 today and since each season lasted roughly a year his annual salary would have been about the same now that's not a bad start for the Show's first leading man and as we'll see it's actually not far off his modern day counterparts so let's move on to the first doctor companions now there's no data available for the show's original companions so Susan Ian and Barbara though based on what we do know about other actors from that same era they would have been earning significantly less than the doctor was so in a 2021 interview Steven actor Peter pervis he described the BBC of 1965 as particularly ungenerous revealing that he was paid just £30 per episode now before you go £30 in today's money that's about £490 now pervis starred in 46 episodes over a onee period which gives him an overall figure of about £ 1,380 so about £22,500 today again the first Dr handbook reports that the era's final pair of companions which was anakah Will and Michael craze they were earning slightly more per episode than purus was at £68 and £52 respectively again today that's around £1,000 and 800 so it's certainly not the most glamorous of paydays especially by modern standards but that being said for all Doctor Who companions there are two silver linings residuals and the convention circuit as pis actually puts it there can't be many people who are still earning a little bit from Doctor Who 50 odd years later I mean how many Doctor Who actors do you see turning up at conventions they're right there are very few jobs where you can still be earning from a role you played sometimes only in like one or two episodes back in the 60s it does blow my mind okay so let's go to John pwee now in 1990s interview John per we actually claimed that he earned about £350 per episode while he was making Doctor Who if anybody thinks I was making a lot of money they're crazy is what he said that's for a week's work and I couldn't do any else so due to the sharp rise in inflation in the 1970s the value of his fee actually changed markedly during his time as the doctor I mean £350 in 1970 would be worth about £4,600 now while £350 in 1974 would actually only just be £3,200 now either way you look at it though he still got less than harnold and furthermore there were fewer episodes per season by this point it's good news for the lead actor schedule not so great news for his bank account so for his first season Pere would have received approximately 8,750 so in today's money that's about £15,000 by his final season his overall figure would in real terms be worth significantly less I mean he would have pulled in around 99,100 which is about £83,000 today that's a drop of 32 Grand from his first season now reportedly Pertwee also received a 3% pay rise each each year and famously and not entirely unreasonably given inflation he said that he'd only continue to do Doctor Who if they increased that to 20% Which of course they refused so we skipped over to Tom Baker so inflation continued to plague doctor who in the second half of the 1970s as well and this directly impacted the show's production with many of the fourth doctor Stories being affected by industrial action but what if the show's leading man the ineffable Tom Baker after all even if you walk in eternity you do still have to pay the bill Baker's Doctor Who's salary has never been officially revealed but no doubt it did drop in value over his 7even years at the helm so if he was being paid the same £350 per episode rate as John per was say his fee would have pretty much halved between 1975 and 1981 so from £2,600 to £1,300 in today's money though of course that doesn't account for any of the pay rises in fact one early report of Baker's salary was greatly exaggerated as the man himself was quick to point out he said I live very simply I have hardly any possessions and I live in a bedset in Pimco I read in a national newspaper that I was getting paid £1,000 a week for Doctor Who that's absolutely Preposterous the BBC must have had a good laugh even if Baker's original paychecks were slightly disappointing that was half a century ago and Doctor Who of course as we know is the financial gift that keeps on giving so he's no doubt made quite a lot more since then Louise Jameson up next so our next companion is Leela who joined the fourth doctor from 1977 to 1978 Luis Jameson has since revealed that her starting salary was £120 per episode and by the time she left the show this had increased to 50 so at first glance this seems like a significant Improvement on the rates received by the previous companions however the figures are deceptive £120 in 1977 would have been worth just £44 pounds in 1967 so in other words Jameson was valued about the same as a 1960s companion so across the 40 episode she appeared in she would have earned something like £29,000 adjusted for inflation so that's slightly more than pis slightly less than wills and around the same as craze so it's not the most impressive salary though it did at least give Jameson a foot in the door at the BBC she recalled by the time I got to his tenders I was on a pretty reasonable whack now there's also the customary conventions as we previously mentioned big finish audios and DVD Blu-ray extras most recently there was the season 15 collection trailer the final battle so she's managed to generate additional who related income in the interim and the show also served as a springboard in other ways for her too with a guest role in Toast of London coming her way purely because the Creator Matt Barry liked Leela so let's skip to Colin Baker so in a 1987 interview shortly after his forced exit from Doctor Who Colin Baker gave a candid interview to the son revealing among a lot of other things his pay stating I'm by no means a rich man from Doctor Who I earned around ,000 an episode so it's not clear whether Baker is referring to Season 22 Episodes which were 45 minutes in length or season 23 episodes which were 25 minutes in length regardless though at 1,000 an episode he would have made £1 13,000 for Season 22 and £14,000 for season 23 respectively that's around £38,000 and £40,000 today a meager sum for the star of one of the biggest shows in the world even if it was on the ropes at that point now the sixth doctor also had a much shorter era than almost any other doctor so whichever way you look at it Colin Baker came away with much less than his predecessors I guess then maybe we should be thanking God for the Renaissance that old sixie has experienced in recent years look at it this way it's no coincidence that conven rhymes with pension hey see what I did there okay now let's jump forward to Christopher eklon so we're going to fast forward all the way to 2005 bringing Doctor Who back was a massive risk for the BBC they knew if it was going to stand any chance of being successful and being taken seriously then it needed to be fronted by a truly great actor and Christopher eckleson fit the bill in every conceivable way but he did come at a cost so according to one report from the standard echelon's single year on the show left him a whopping £600,000 better off in 2024 that's over a million which is an extremely impressive salary considering the Revival was far from a safe bet now of course he did leave Doctor Who prematurely in exceptional circumstances so assuming that that figure is accurate it might refer to a contract for multiple series rather than just series one perhaps three series at £200,000 each maybe but even then that would be almost £350,000 per year in 2024 which is not too shabby either way Billy Piper Ninth Doctor companion Rose Tyler lived on a council estate and lost her job shortly after meeting the time Lord but the reality for the actress playing her Billy Piper was quite different now we don't know how much Piper earned for her work on series 1 though it would be reasonable to assume that it wasn't quite as much as her co-star regardless of how much he really earned however the fee for her second run of episodes has been reported with the people claiming it was £210,000 in today's money that's £350,000 that's around 10 times the salary of the average Classic series companion and wait because that is not all if this report is to be believed then Piper received around £50,000 more than new Dr David Tenant for the 2006 series which is possibly the first time in history that a companion was paid more than the doctor it's great news that Billy is staying a source was quoted as saying her deal is what she deserves as she's a favorite with fans now if all this is true you can see the logic in paying Piper more than tenant at this stage I mean she was a proven draw as Rose not to mention her successful music career and after the eklon drama it was probably quite important to keep her around and also to keep her happy tenant though a proven actor in his own right before he played the doctor would have to prove he was worth a bumper doctor ho payday and uh that is exactly what he did so let's look at David Tenant Doctor Who's mainstream popularity peaked when David Tenant played the 10th doctor so really it should come as no surprise that his salary is out of all of the doctors the most speculated about this was a doctor who was unable to lend Donna money without raiding an ATM yet also managed to procure her a winning lottery ticket but one of the man himself well as discussed tenant was apparently paid less for Series 2 than Billy Piper taking home £66,000 to her £210,000 the same report claims that tenant signed a three-year contract for £500,000 which is roughly £66,000 a year in today's money that would be £275,000 annually but the final word goes to the wrap which suggests that tenant ended up receiving a staggering $1 million per year I mean that sounds more realistic for the latter stages of his run when and his value was undeniable no wonder the money in The Runaway Bride had tenants face printed all over it that's a lot of money so then we went to Matt Smith now the 11th doctor was one of the few doctors to actually get a job remember in the toy department of coester Sanderson and Granger and as he explains to Craig saw a shop got a job you've got to live in the moment now however good the pay at Sanderson and Granger was we fairly sure it wasn't as good as what Matt Smith was earning in real life so according to reports at the time Smith's original contract committed him to 3 years on the show with an option for two more and the overall fee was £1 million working out at £200,000 a year now of course Matt Smith only ended up completing three series of the show so in that case he would have walked away with a total of £600,000 which would be about £ 890,000 today if the 1 million figure for tenant is correct the 11th Doctor's basic earnings were only a fraction of tens by those metrics tenant earned more in a single year than Smith did overall and then we saw Peter Capaldi so the 12th doctor was supposedly still on the unit payroll as of death in heaven and later he held down a job at St Luke's University now it's not clear how much he earned from either of those Endeavors but when it comes to the man who played him things are a little bit clearer and that's because Capaldi is one of the only doctors to have his salary public Al revealed by the BBC now that wasn't because of capodi himself it was because of the 2017 policy which required the corporation to declare its highest earning Stars basically anyone earning more than £150,000 now the exact pay packet that Capia received that year is unknown but we do know that it was somewhere in the £200,000 to £49,999 bracket that was a lot of nines so if you want a bit of context East Ender star Danny Dyer and Silent Witness star Amelia Fox they both earned a similar amount while casualties Derek Thompson was on over £100,000 more topping the talent list was presenter Chris Evans who brought in over2 million that quarter of a million fee would basically cover Capaldi's work on series 10 and it's not clear whether he was paid the same for series 8 and series 9 though it probably would seem quite likely so let's move over to Jody Whitaker the BBC no longer has to include actors in its list of highest paid earners so the exact amount received by the 14th and the 15th doctors will forever remain a mystery but thanks to a quirk of timing we do have some idea about jod Whitaker's starting salary now the report that revealed Peter Capaldi's earnings came just days after Whitaker's casting was announced and that prompted speculation about whether or not the Show's first female doctor would receive more or less than her male predecessors and the BBC director General Tony Hall soon put those rumors to rest and he confirmed that the 13th Doctor would be paid the same amount as the 12th so this means that at least to begin with Whitaker was also in that £200,000 to £49,999 bracket now obviously with Disney now partnering on the show and bigger budgets than we've ever seen we might speculate that the current doctor shoy gatw is earning more than any of these doctors before him but still a quarter of a million basic salary per year for Capal and Whitaker is nothing to sneeze at and there you have it so now we know how much these actors were earning once they were in the role but is anyone curious about how they got cast in the first place well feir not because we have a video covering just that so why not check out how every doctor got cast in the meantime I've been Ellie for who culture and in the words of Riverson herself goodbye sweeties