Open Source Idiom posted:

There was an article about a few years back, but essentially we've reached a situation with actors and streaming shows such that the leads are now being paid considerably more per episode than they once were, regardless of apparent star power.

While there are no A list stars here, other than Pitt's producer credit, that was largely true of the Apes films IIRC -- the first film's only star power at the time was James Franco. (Karen Konoval is the star of my heart, though, and Serkis is no slouch). What you have here is far more actors, many of them character actors with industry name recognition.

This is a show that could afford to film and then dump scenes with Sylvester McCoy, but also employ people like CCH Pounder, Mark Gattiss, Benedict Wong, Liam Cunningham, Jovan Adepo and Jonathan Price, among others, some in tremendously small roles. All these people are quite respected in the industry, despite being working actors. That you don't know who they are doesn't mean they don't need to be paid a lot to have them all on your project, it just means you're uneducated.