If you’ve ever wondered how much money the Shahs of Sunset cast earned in their early days on Bravo, Reza Farahan is here to tell you the answer. It wasn’t very much.
Although Reza has graduated to his new series, The Valley: Persian Style, he is taking fans back in time with his new memoir, Memoirs of a Gay Shah: My Story of Family, Fame, and Becoming a King.
It just hit shelves today, and he spilled a whole lot of tea on how things went down in those early days on Bravo.
The Bravo star returned to screens on The Valley: Persian Style
Us Weekly got a sneak peek at a few snippets from Reza’s memoir. In one chapter, he dished about the paychecks he and his castmates received in Season 1 of Shahs of Sunset. They were far from life-changing, and he claimed that Bravo tried to “keep a thumb” on the cast.
“The last thing they want is for the cast to figure out how valuable they are. They want to keep you in the dark and keep a thumb on your head, so you don’t ask for more money,” Reza wrote. “There’s no gold statue moment. It’s a constant game of trying to keep you in check, no matter how popular you become.”
Reza said they were earning four figures an episode, but like many reality stars, he felt pressured to keep up a ritzy appearance on the show. He recalled buying Louboutins, even though the per-episode checks from Shahs of Sunset couldn’t cover one pair. He then went on to drag the low production value of their debut season.
“With how dumpy everything about the production was at that point, my minuscule check felt like it might be eating up the majority of the budget,” Reza wrote.
He added, “During Season 1, I shot my confessional interviews in a storage closet. I’m not even kidding. The camera person was doing my makeup, for God’s sake. We didn’t have a legit makeup artist.”
According to Reza, things started to change ahead of Season 3 when Bravo offered a pay raise that felt like “a pittance.” That prompted the cast to band together.
“At the end of the day, it all worked out,” Reza recalled. “We agreed to a favored nations contract, and our per-episode salary went up something like six or seven times what it was previously. We went from four digits per episode to five for the season. So that was a nice bump.”
Reza now stars on The Valley: Persian Style, after Bravo hit pause on Shahs of Sunset for several years. No word on if he had to renegotiate for a bigger paycheck or if he’s back in the four-digit zone.
The Valley: Persian Style and Shahs of Sunset are both streaming on Peacock.
TELL US – WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON REZA’S COMMENTS ABOUT HIS SHAHS OF SUNSET PAYCHECK? ARE YOU SURPRISED TO SEE HIM CRITICIZE BRAVO?
