Soap opera veterans—think someone like Eric Braeden (Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless) or Susan Lucci (the iconic Erica Kane on All My Children)—are the royalty of daytime TV. They can make anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 per episode. Do the math: that’s a cool $500,000 to $1.5 million a year, depending on how many episodes they shoot (usually around 250 per year).
Of course, that’s if you’re the king or queen of the soapy kingdom. Lower-tier vets who’ve been around for a decade or so might pull in $1,500 to $3,000 per episode. Still not bad for pretending to cry over a paternity test, right? Right?
But here’s the kicker: those salaries haven’t gone up much since the 1990s, because soap budgets are tighter than a love triangle in a hospital hallway. Network execs are like, “Hey, we’ll give you a raise, but you have to also play the twin who shows up from nowhere.”
