‘Game Of Thrones’ Emmy-Nominated Star Fights Paying Out $2M To Ex-Manager
Unlike Game of Thrones itself, the legal battle between Emmy nominee Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and his former manager over commissions and contracts doesn’t look to be ending soon, despite the recent $2 million ruling by an arbitrator who found in favor of the actor’s ex-reps.
Coster-Waldau, who plays Kingslayer Jaime Lannister, and his attorney were handed a detailed interim decision late last month (read it here) telling him to pony up “$1,752,564.55 plus pre-judgment interest at 10% per annum.” Seasoned arbitrator Henry J. Silberberg on August 22 also ordered the actor to make biannual payments on his now-$1,066,667-per-episode GOT earnings and any other cash that evolved out of Jill Littman’s handling of his career up until 2015.
Heading into the 70th Primetime Emmys on September 17 with an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series nomination, Coster-Waldau got a Final Award on Tuesday (read it here) that also drilled in with a specific $224,720 in interest plus the more than $1.7 million for breach of contract and now various legal fees – which, along with the amounts the actor was paid for an Apple ad and more, are laid out in the Interim Award.
Add to that the long road this lawsuit has traveled and the eighth and final season of the HBO blockbuster based on George R.R. Martin’s books set to premiere next year, and you’d think that it would be time for the WME-repped actor to cut his losses and move on.
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You might presume that, even more so after the $17.5 million that Coster-Waldau is estimated to have made since inking a 2014 agreement with Littman and her Impression Entertainment, but you would be wrong.
Or as Littman and Impression’s lawyer Howard King put it Wednesday in a statement, “Although a Lannister always pays his debts, NCW has declined to honor the final ruling of the arbitrator and pay the compensation found to be due his former manager for all the successes she contributed to during her 8-year reign.”
Similar to the ever-scheming Lannisters of GOT, Coster-Waldau hasn’t given up the fight and now has filed an appeal in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking a new trial and hence a new round of litigation. That move comes even though the August 30 objection to the award that the actor’s lawyer Michael Plonsker put forth quickly was denied.
That, plus the four days of arbitration and a day of deposition in Northern Ireland earlier this year followed a failed attempt in January by Coster-Waldau to get the 2011 and 2014 deals that he had with Littman before he canned her in 2015 rendered null and void because of fraud in execution. That same ruling in LASC also saw a fail awarded on his aim have the arbitration on the July 2017 suit that he filed against his ex-manager halted.
The Interim Award additionally slammed down Coster-Waldau’s contention that the written agreements were a “sham” designed to facilitate O1-Visa immigration requirements to the USA for the Danish actor.
“There is no credible evidence in support of this contention,” Silberberg wrote last month. “In fact, NCW squarely admitted in his testimony that Littman never told him that the 2011 Agreement was a sham or that it would not be considered a real agreement or that Impression would not enforce it. And, he offered no evidence that Littman ever acknowledged in any way that the 2014 Agreement is a sham, or not intended to be a real and enforceable contract. Moreover, NCW claims that he did not read either of the Agreements before signing them. Littman and Impression contend that the Agreements are and were intended to be real and not shams.”
The GOT actor’s attorney Plonsker did not reply to a request for comment on the final order and the continuation of the dispute.
While we wait to see whether the courts will indulge Coster-Waldau to basically start this all over and what battlefield this heads to next, remember that the six-episode concluding season of the two-time Outstanding Drama Series Emmy-winning Game of Thrones is said to be coming in the first half of 2019 – when this legal action still might be going on.
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