House of the Dragon viewers have been stunned by several moments in the show’s third season, and Matt Smith’s reported pay packet could leave them just as shocked.
Smith plays Prince Daemon Targaryen in the Game of Thrones prequel, where the character’s family ties and visions have driven some of the season’s most talked-about scenes.
Aemond Targaryen, who is Daemon’s nephew, has been at the centre of a number of ‘incest scenes’.
In one moment, he kissed his mother Alicent, played by Olivia Cooke, and another sequence made it seem as though he was having sex with her.
It was later made clear that he was actually with his lover Alys Rivers, played by Gayle Rankin, while hallucinating about his mother.
The drama is unlikely to let up either, with HBO already confirming that season four will serve as the ‘final act’.
HBO has never publicly revealed Smith’s exact salary for the series. Still, there is some context from the franchise’s past.
By the height of Game of Thrones, leading stars such as Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke were reportedly taking home $500,000 per episode. Earlier in that show’s run, though, reports suggested the cast earned less than $300,000 an episode, according to Cosmopolitan.
For House of the Dragon, reports claimed the cast was earning somewhere between $100,000 and $300,000 per episode during season one, with those figures likely rising afterward.
Based on those estimates, Smith could reasonably be earning around $300,000 per episode. Across 24 episodes, that would put his likely total at about $7.2 million.
As of 2026, Celebrity Net Worth estimates Smith’s overall fortune at roughly $9 million.
A significant part of that is thought to come from his time leading Doctor Who, where he played the Doctor from 2010 until 2013.
He later joined Netflix’s The Crown as the younger Prince Philip for two seasons, a role that was reportedly worth $52,000 per episode.
Even so, Smith is not believed to be the wealthiest performer in the House of the Dragon cast.
That distinction reportedly belongs to Rhys Ifans, who plays Ser Otto Hightower and is widely said to have a net worth of $12.5 million.
Much of that comes from a lengthy film career, including parts in Notting Hill and The Amazing Spider-Man, alongside his role as the Hand of the King.
HBO has officially confirmed that House of the Dragon will conclude with season four, following showrunner Ryan Condal’s original plan for a four-season story arc. The final season is expected to premiere in 2028, meaning fans will face a substantial wait after season three concludes on August 9.
With season three continuing the eight-episode structure used by the previous two runs, the final chapter is also expected to follow the same pattern. Of course, with a show like this, surprises are always possible.
The season two finale caught plenty of people off guard when Daemon experienced a vision of the future rather than the past, which had been the pattern before.
That finale also leaked online before it officially arrived, something fans will no doubt hope is avoided this time around.