2023 Oscars
Jimmy Kimmel and his salary for hosting the Oscars
The comedian is set to host the Academy Awards for the third time, and he’s spoken about his salary for the event in the past.
Jimmy Kimmel is set to host the Oscars for the third time on Sunday night, but if the talk show host’s past comments are anything to go by, it doesn’t look like he’s in for a big payday.
Jimmy Kimmel and his salary for hosting the Oscars
In 2022, Wanda Sykes co-hosted the Oscars with Regina Hall and Amy Schumer, and she stopped by ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ to talk about the role, and the two discussed the salary.
“I was really excited about [hosting], but then I realized that out of all the jobs that I have, this one is actually gonna cost me money,” said Sykes.
Kimmel responded with a follow-up question: “It is going to cost you money—will you say how much you get paid for this?”
Sykes joked that she didn’t even know, and that there was probably a scale, referring to the SAG-AFTRA scale pay, the minimum the union members can be paid.
That’s when Kimmel, who hosted in 2017 and 2018, revealed how much he had been paid for hosting: “It’s less than that. I got paid $15,000 to host the Oscars. And there’s one of me! You guys will probably have to split that.”
He wasn’t the first celebrity to talk about how much hosting the Oscars pays. Alec Baldwin previously told The Hollywood Reporter: “They don’t pay you any money; the Oscars pay you like chicken feed.
“It’s all about the honor of helping to extol film achievement.”
The figure is very different from the one Jimmy Kimmel makes as host of the ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’.
The 55-year-old takes home $15 million a year to host the show, and with around 170 episodes airing in a season, that means he makes around $88,000 per show.
Rihanna and her Super Bowl halftime appearance
While the $15,000 isn’t close to how much he makes for his talk show, Kimmel is still getting paid more than Rihanna did for her Super Bowl halftime appearance.
The singer, as is custom, didn’t receive any money for performing at Super Bowl LVII.
However, Super Bowl is a huge opportunity for exposure, with Rihanna seeing a huge boost in streaming and downloads of her music catalog in the days following the performance.