Meet Sofia Vergara The World's Highest-Paid TV Actress 2016 With $43 Million

                                   Sofia Vergara tops the list of the highest-paid TV actresses for the fifth year running, with her biggest take yet of $43 million. TV is often said to be in its golden age. Audiences have a wealth of quality content to choose from, be it from broadcast television, cable networks or a streaming service. But does that translate into gold for those on screen?
For Sofia Vergara, it sure does. For the fifth year in a row, the Colombian actress tops our list of the world’s highest-paid TV actresses, bringing in $43 million in the 12 months to June before management fees and taxes, which is also more than any TV actor made.

Ironically, it’s not her role as
Gloria Delgado-Pritchett that is responsible for her 66% earnings bump over last year. Rather it’s endorsement and licensing deals–for products including a line of furniture, dandruff shampoo Head and Shoulders and even nurse scrubs–that have proven the most fruitful.

That isn’t the case for runner-up Kaley Cuoco, who notched $24.5 million in the same period, almost all from her role as Penny on Big Bang Theory; along with her castmates, she commands the biggest TV deal of the day, making $1 million per episode for the CBS.

In all, the 15 highest-paid female stars of the small screen made a combined $208.5 million between June 2015 and June 2016 —$43.5 more than last year’s combined total of $165 million. This increase can be chalked up to some new lucrative endorsement deals (like Vergara’s with the Ninja Coffee Bar and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ with Old Navy ).

New to the list is Priyanka Chopra, who stars on ABC’s Quantico.While Chopra may be relatively new to an  American audience, she is one of the most famous faces in India. In the past year, she has starred in two Bollywood mega films (Bajirao Mastani and Jai Gangaajal) and will take her big-screen talent stateside later this year with one of the lead roles in Baywatch alongside Hollywood heavy-hitters including Dwayne Johnson, the world’s highest-paid actor.

But like most television actresses (and actresses, in general), her millions are not made from screen time alone. Chopra is one of India’s top picks for advertisers, recently winning a seven-figure deal with sparkling juice brand Appy Fizz.

                                                    Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra joins the list for the first time thanks to her role in ABC’s Quantico. 


Also new to the list is Stana Katic, the lead of ABC’s mystery series Castle. Although the show has received little critical attention, it garners consistent ratings for the network. Katic, who returned for the past and final season last minute, only did so after negotiating a lucrative deal that included a salary increase and a good share of the backend profit.

Louis-Dreyfus may be a familiar name in TV, but she is new to the list, which was launched after her Seinfeld days. The star has since become known as Selena, not Elaine, with her role in VEEP—a lucrative one, especially considering she also serves (and gets paid) as the show’s executive producer. Despite Seinfeld’s notorious $160 million deal with Hulu, Louis-Dreyfus gets paid little to nothing for her work on the show, as she does not receive any percentage of profit.

While Hollywood has a lot of work to do to close the gender wage gap between actors and actresses, it’s not as severe in TV as in the film industry. In part, this is because ensemble casts generally negotiate their salaries together. Vergara, for example, has the same Modern Family paycheck as Ty Burrell and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Cuoco makes the same amount from Big Bang Theory as Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki.

Still, there aren’t nearly enough of these balanced ensemble casts. Across broadcast, cable and streaming, 58% of series regulars are males, according to the Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment. And the percentages of speaking female characters are only 36.4%, 37.3% and 38.1%, across broadcast, cable and streaming, respectively. Speaking roles, which obviously require more work, are rewarded with higher salaries, and the imbalance enforces the gender wage gap.

“For years and years, the role of the lead actress on a sitcom was to do two things: look amazing and to make one-third of what my male co-star makes,” said Mindy Kaling—who ranked third on our list with earnings of $15 million—earlier this year. “So I want to be clear, I do always look amazing on the show, and no man on my show makes more money than me.”

Hopefully more and more producers and directors will take her approach to television, and this gap will continue to close.

Our earnings estimates are based on data from Nielsen , Box Office Mojo and IMDB, as well as interviews with agents, managers, lawyers and industry insiders. Our list of the world’s highest-paid TV actors will be published next week, while the lists of the highest-paid film actors and actresses were published in August.




Credit: Forbes