How Much Did Bella Ramsey Get Paid for The Last of Us?

The Short Answer

The number first: Bella Ramsey earned $70,000 $/ep for playing Ellie Williams in The Last of Us (2023), according to Multiple reports in 2023. Multiple outlets reported that Bella Ramsey earned $70,000 per episode for The Last of Us season 1 — $630,000 for nine episodes — compared to Pedro Pascal's $600,000 per episode. The nearly 9x gap between the co-leads became one of the most debated pay disparities in recent television.

That figure is the reported upfront salary, and it reflects something very specific: the actor's quote at the moment the deal was signed. In Hollywood, a quote is a function of recent box-office history, competing offers, and leverage — not a measure of talent. An actor coming off a hit can double their asking price overnight; an actor between hits negotiates from a very different position. The number in this article is therefore a snapshot of market power at a single point in time, and it would likely be different if the same deal were negotiated a year earlier or a year later.

It helps to be precise about what a reported salary includes. The figure covers the acting fee for the project — not endorsements, not appearances, not producing fees unless the actor also held a producer credit (in which case those are usually separate line items). Backend, box-office bonuses, and profit participation are additive: they can multiply the total, but they are almost never disclosed with the same confidence as the upfront number.

It is worth asking why this particular figure entered the public record when most salaries never do. In most cases, disclosure serves someone's interest: an agent burnishing a client's quote, a studio projecting confidence, or a journalist serving a readership fascinated by the economics of stardom. Numbers that stay private usually stay private because no party gains from their release.

The Deal in Numbers

• Reported salary: $70,000 $/ep for Bella Ramsey's role as Ellie Williams.
• Reported by: Multiple reports in 2023 — trade/entertainment press reporting, not a studio confirmation.
• Estimated total: $630K (season 1).
• Episode count: 16 episodes, 2 seasons (2023-2025) in the relevant season on HBO.
• Co-star pay: Bella Ramsey (Ellie Williams, The Last of Us season 1 (2023)) — $70,000 per episode.
• Co-star pay: Pedro Pascal (Joel Miller, The Last of Us season 1 (2023)) — $600,000 per episode.
• Status: reported estimate. Backend, bonuses, and profit participation — if any — are not included in the headline figure.

The The Last of Us Pay Breakdown

Here is how the reported pay broke down across The Last of Us's principal cast, based on public reporting:

Figures are reported estimates, not studio-confirmed amounts.

A few things to notice in the table above. First, every figure is an upfront guarantee — backend and bonuses, which can dwarf the base, are invisible here. Second, the numbers reflect negotiating leverage at signing, which is why an actor with a recent hit can out-earn a more famous co-star. Third, 'reported' matters: these are journalists' best estimates from sourced conversations, and while the sourcing here is strong, no studio has confirmed any of these numbers on the record.

How It Compares

Salary figures only mean something in context. A $20 million paycheck sounds enormous until you learn the co-star got $30 million; a $300,000 episodic fee sounds modest until you learn the show's entire budget was $4 million an episode. The comparisons below place this payday on the industry's actual pay scale — what peers earned for comparable work in the same era, reported by the same caliber of outlets.

• Jenna Ortega — $30K/ep (reported) for Wednesday season 1. The most widely repeated newcomer figure.
• Millie Bobby Brown — $20-30K/ep for Stranger Things season 1. Her reported child-star starting salary.
• Sadie Sink — $150K/ep for Stranger Things season 2. Her reported fee when joining the cast.

The through-line: Bella Ramsey's deal was negotiated against exactly this landscape. Agents walk into every negotiation armed with comparables like these, and studios counter with their own. The final number is where those two sets of comparables met.

The Career Context: Why This Was Bella Ramsey's Market Rate

Ramsey broke through as the fierce Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones (2016-2019) as a child actor, then carried The Last of Us as Ellie, earning Emmy nominations and becoming one of Gen Z's most acclaimed young performers.

That figure is the reported upfront salary — the guaranteed check, before any bonuses, backend participation, or profit points. In today's Hollywood, the headline number is rarely the whole story: for films expected to perform, studios routinely trade a lower upfront fee for a share of the outcome, which means the final payday can end up multiples higher than the announced salary. When a project overperforms, it is the backend — not the base — that creates the truly enormous paydays, and it is why two actors with identical upfront fees can walk away with wildly different totals.

Put Bella Ramsey's deal next to Jenna Ortega's Wednesday season 1 ($30K/ep (reported)) and Millie Bobby Brown's Stranger Things season 1 ($20-30K/ep), and the logic of the quote becomes visible: pay tracks recent commercial heat more closely than it tracks fame, awards, or tenure. An actor's salary is a lagging indicator of their last few projects' performance — which is why a single hit can reprice someone overnight, and why a quiet stretch can quietly discount them.

How Star Salaries Get Set

Every salary in this article was set the same way: through a negotiation governed by the quote system. An actor's quote is the salary their representatives claim they command, anchored by their most recent comparable deals. Agents establish it with competing offers — real or strategically implied — and studios test it against their own comparables and the project's budget ceiling. Most-favored-nation clauses, which guarantee no co-star earns more, are common in ensemble deals and explain why so many casts end up at identical figures. The final number is rarely anyone's opening bid; it is the point where the actor's leverage and the studio's budget found equilibrium.

The Bigger Picture

Step back and this deal illustrates how television became the industry's other lottery ticket. Prestige TV budgets now rival mid-size films, and the per-episode salaries at the top of the market exceed what most film actors earn per project. The driver is competition: with half a dozen deep-pocketed platforms bidding for a limited pool of proven talent, the price of a star has been bid steadily upward for a decade.

There is a second-order effect worth noting: every per-episode figure that becomes public becomes ammunition for the next negotiation. When a $1 million episodic fee leaks, it resets expectations across the industry — showrunners budget against it, agents demand it, and platforms either pay it or lose the talent. Public salary reporting doesn't just describe the TV market; it actively reprices it, one disclosed deal at a time.

About This Salary Figure

On sourcing: the salary figures here come from public reporting by established entertainment journalists, each cited by name. Hollywood pay is private by default — no studio publishes a payroll — so 'reported' is doing real work in these sentences. It means a professional journalist staked their reputation on the number. That is the strongest form of evidence available for this kind of information, and also its limit.

For this article, the anchor figure is $70,000 ($/ep) reported by Multiple reports in 2023.

Why treat this figure as credible? It comes from an established outlet with a track record of sourced salary reporting, it is consistent with the project's scale and the performer's quote at the time, and it has been repeated across entertainment press without correction. That is about as solid as unconfirmed Hollywood pay reporting gets.

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