How Much Did Viola Davis Get Paid for How to Get Away with Murder?

The Short Answer

The number first: Viola Davis earned $250,000 $/ep for playing Annalise Keating in How to Get Away with Murder (2014), according to Variety in 2016. Variety reported in 2016 that Viola Davis earned $250,000 per episode for How to Get Away with Murder — the same fee as Shondaland stablemate Kerry Washington on Scandal. The survey that revealed the figure also exposed the pay gap: the biggest minority TV stars earned a fraction of what white sitcom leads made.

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: $250,000 $/ep for Viola Davis's role as Annalise Keating.
• Reported by: Variety in 2016 — trade/entertainment press reporting, not a studio confirmation.
• Estimated total: $22.5M (series total, at base rate).
• Episode count: 90 episodes, 6 seasons (2014-2020) in the relevant season on ABC.
• Co-star pay: Viola Davis (Annalise Keating, HTGAWM (2014-2020)) — $250,000 per episode.
• Co-star pay: Kerry Washington (Olivia Pope, Scandal (2012-2018)) — $250,000 per episode.
• Status: reported estimate. Backend, bonuses, and profit participation — if any — are not included in the headline figure.

The How to Get Away with Murder Pay Breakdown

Here is how the reported pay broke down across How to Get Away with Murder's principal cast, based on public reporting:

Figures are reported estimates, not studio-confirmed amounts.

Reading a salary table like this one is an exercise in Hollywood semiotics. Billing order and pay order do not always match: the biggest star is not always the highest-paid, because pay reflects the deal struck at a specific moment, not a permanent ranking. Equal pay among co-stars usually signals a deliberate packaging decision — often to avoid the press cycle that erupts when a gap leaks. And when one actor earns multiples of another on the same project, the gap almost always maps to a gap in recent box-office leverage, not screen time.

How It Compares

To judge whether a salary is high or low, you need the right peer group: same era, same medium, similar leverage. The deals below are the closest available comparables — what actors of similar standing earned for similar-sized projects around the same time. Together they sketch the market rate this deal was negotiated against, and they explain why the number landed where it did.

• Ellen Pompeo — $400K/ep for Grey's Anatomy. Variety reported her Shondaland-topper fee.
• Jim Parsons — $1M/ep for The Big Bang Theory. Variety reported the sitcom peak - 4x Davis's fee.
• Taraji P. Henson — $175K/ep for Empire. Variety reported her network-drama fee.
• Kerry Washington — $250K/ep for Scandal (peak). Variety reported the matching Shondaland fee.

The through-line: Viola Davis'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 Viola Davis's Market Rate

Davis is one of the few EGOT-adjacent performers of her generation: an Oscar (Fences), an Emmy (HTGAWM), and two Tonys. Her 2015 Emmy win — the first for a Black woman in the lead drama actress category — came while she was earning $250K per episode.

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.

Put Viola Davis's deal next to Ellen Pompeo's Grey's Anatomy ($400K/ep) and Jim Parsons's The Big Bang Theory ($1M/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

There is also the question of who knew the number before it reached the press. Salary information travels through a small circuit: the agency that negotiated it, the studio business-affairs department that approved it, the payroll company that processed it, and the lawyers on both sides. Leaks typically come from the side that benefits — usually the actor's camp, establishing a quote for the next negotiation. That selection bias is worth remembering: the salaries we hear about are disproportionately the impressive ones.

The Bigger Picture

The bigger story is the streaming-driven inflation of TV salaries. When platforms were spending to acquire subscribers at any cost, per-episode fees detached from anything broadcast television had ever paid — and they never fully came back down. Even as the industry tightens, established stars continue to command the quotes set during the peak years. Each deal like this one becomes the comparable cited in the next negotiation.

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 $250,000 ($/ep) reported by Variety in 2016.

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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