Pat Sajak is leaving Wheel of Fortune, but co-host Vanna White has reportedly negotiated a deal to continue lighting up letters on the celebrity version.
TMZ reports that she “settled for $100k an episode,” a “meaningful bump” in her current salary, although it’s unclear if it was half of Sajak’s salary, which is what her lawyer, Bryan Freedman, was seeking.
Yahoo Entertainment has reached out to the show for confirmation.
Sajak announced in June that the season that begins in September will be his last. He and White have been on the show together since 1982, and she’s even hosted in his place. So there was talk about whether she would replace Sajak before Ryan Seacrest officially accepted the role.
Afterward, Puck claimed that White had made a substantially lower salary than Sajak for decades, about $3 million annually to his reported $15 million in recent years. She hadn’t had a raise, the website wrote, in 18 years, and she’d hired her “aggressive new lawyer” to get more.
In the latest, TMZ said Sony would not disclose how much Sajak is pulling in for Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, although they hear that it’s a little more than $400,000 per episode.
Negotiations for White’s work on the syndicated series are on pause, because of the writer’s strike. That shouldn’t be a problem in the immediate future, since her contract for that still has another year on it.
However, the outlook’s not good, as Sony reportedly nixed Freedman’s idea to have a game show expert determine a “fair figure” for White. A source was quoted as saying, “It’s gonna get ugly if they [Sony] don’t get more serious.”
All this is despite White’s continued popularity with viewers. As long ago as 1986, the Los Angeles Times observed Vanna-Mania, which included a book and other merchandise inspired by the beautifully dressed TV star. It’s a period that White herself once discussed with the Television Academy Foundation.
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“I was everywhere,” she said in an undated interview. “Quite honestly, I got sick of seeing myself.”
Almost 40 years later, on the day that Seacrest was announced as Sajak’s successor, he noted that he was looking forward to “working alongside the great Vanna White.”
