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TV's Highest Paid Star Is Gay—And No, It's Not Ellen

Does it finally pay to be gay in Hollywood?

Variety has peeked at the salaries of television's biggest stars, and the results are quite interesting: It turns out some of the highest paid small-screen stars are part of the LGBT community.

We might not rate full representation, but we still get the do, re, mi.

Jim Parsons gets the biggest paycheck in Hollywood, earning a cool million dollars for every episode of CBS' long-running Big Bang Theory. (His cast mates come immediately after.) Ellen DeGeneres makes $20 million a year, though probably rakes in a lot more with endorsements.

Silver-haired daddies are making bank, too: Anderson Cooper nets somewhere around $10 million a year from CNN, while Andy Cohen gets between $4 and $5 million for Watch What Happens Live—separate, we assume, from any producing he does for Bravo shows.

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Playing queer on TV is good for the wallet, apparently: Jeffrey Tambor earns $275,000 per episode for his role as Maura on Transparent, while Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet each bank $250,000 per ep for Modern Family.

But do fat paychecks translate into mainstream Hollywood acceptance?

Well, 2016 did see a record number of LGBT characters on broadcast and streaming series, according to GLAAD. Among nearly 900 series regular characters on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW, 43 characters—or approximately 4.8%—were lesbian, gay, bi, trans or queer. (That’s up from 35 last season.)

But LGBT characters were also killed off in record numbers: More than 25 lesbian and bi characters alone met gruesome ends last year.

h/t: Out

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