Slow Horses, Apple TV+’s critically acclaimed spy thriller series based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, has maintained a 98% average approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes across its first five seasons. Season 5, adapting London Rules, premiered on 24 September 2025 with new episodes dropping weekly and the finale airing 29 October 2025. The show has already been renewed through Season 7. Season 6 finished filming before Season 5’s release. The cast, anchored by Gary Oldman as the dishevelled and brilliant Jackson Lamb, combines British acting royalty with rising talent. Oldman’s net worth leads the ensemble at an estimated $40 million. Below is a breakdown of the main cast and what they are worth.
Gary Oldman (Jackson Lamb): The Man Who Makes the Show
Gary Oldman has an estimated net worth of $40 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth, making him the wealthiest cast member in Slow Horses by a considerable margin. The 67-year-old from New Cross, South London, was knighted in 2023, following his Academy Award win for Best Actor for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour in 2018. His career covers four decades of some of the most transformative character work in modern cinema: Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy, Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK, Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Norman Stansfield in Leon: The Professional, Sirius Black across the Harry Potter franchise, Commissioner Gordon across the Dark Knight trilogy, and George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He was called “the greatest film actor of his generation” by Alec Baldwin and “a very strong candidate for the world’s best living actor” by Colin Firth.
His Jackson Lamb is a career-defining television performance in a different register from his film work. Lamb is unkempt, flatulent, deliberately offensive, and strategically brilliant, a character whose surface-level repulsiveness is a deliberate performance masking total tactical control. Oldman has received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for the role. He also serves as an executive producer on the show, meaning his financial relationship with Slow Horses extends beyond his acting salary to include a production stake in the series. His production company is co-run with his longtime manager Douglas Urbanski. For a show of Slow Horses’ Apple TV+ scale and critical profile, the executive producer credit carries meaningful backend value.
Kristin Scott Thomas (Diana Taverner): The Ice at the Top of MI5
Kristin Scott Thomas has an estimated net worth of $12 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. The 64-year-old from Redruth, Cornwall, trained at the École nationale supérieure des arts et techniques du théâtre in Paris and is a dual French-British national. Her defining film credits include Four Weddings and a Funeral, The English Patient for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, Gosford Park, The Horse Whisperer, and Darkest Hour. Her appearance in Fleabag Season 2 as the character known only as Godmother introduced her to a younger generation of viewers who may not have grown up with The English Patient.
As Diana Taverner, designated Second Desk and by Season 5 promoted to First Desk and Director General of MI5, she plays Lamb’s counterpart and adversary within the intelligence hierarchy. Her arc across the series places her as the institutional power whose pragmatism and ruthlessness contrast with Lamb’s chaotic but morally anchored approach. At the Season 5 finale, Taverner has reached the summit of MI5. Where Brooker and Herron take her next, in the already-filmed Season 6 and the anticipated Season 7, is one of the show’s central dramatic questions.
Jonathan Pryce (David Cartwright): A Career’s Worth of Prestige in One Character
Jonathan Pryce has an estimated net worth of $16 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. The 77-year-old Welsh actor, Sir Jonathan Pryce CBE, trained at RADA on a scholarship and won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Comedians in 1977. His career spans Brazil, Evita, Tomorrow Never Dies, three Pirates of the Caribbean films, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Two Popes for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, the High Sparrow in Game of Thrones, and Prince Philip in the final two seasons of The Crown. He has Olivier Awards for Hamlet and for The Engineer in Miss Saigon.
He plays David Cartwright, River’s grandfather and a legendary retired senior MI5 officer known affectionately as The Old Bastard, a title that conveys both reverence and exasperation. Cartwright has been a special guest from Season 1 and a main cast member from Season 4. He is one of the show’s most emotionally resonant characters: a man whose entire professional life was devoted to an institution that quietly swallows its own, and whose relationship with his grandson River anchors the show’s more human dimension alongside all the tradecraft. Pryce brings the same quality to Cartwright that he brought to Pope Francis: authority without vanity, intelligence without condescension.
Jack Lowden (River Cartwright): The Rising Star of Slough House
Jack Lowden has an estimated net worth of approximately $3 to $5 million, built across a relatively short period since his breakthrough. The 34-year-old from Lanark, Scotland, is best known before Slow Horses for playing a young Spitfire pilot in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, Siegfried Sassoon in Terence Davies’s Benediction, and Kenneth Noye in the BAFTA-winning Channel 4 miniseries The Gold. His Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Slow Horses Season 3 reflects the show’s international critical standing and his growing profile in American prestige television.
River Cartwright is the closest thing Slow Horses has to a conventional protagonist: an ambitious MI5 officer banished to Slough House after a very public training-exercise failure, trying to prove himself while operating under Lamb’s deliberately infuriating supervision. Lowden’s task is to make River compelling enough to carry scenes without Oldman, which is a substantial ask. The Emmy nomination suggests he has managed it. He is in a long-term relationship with actress Saoirse Ronan.
Sophie Okonedo (Ingrid Tearney): Stage Royalty Joins the Show
Sophie Okonedo has an estimated net worth of approximately $4 to $5 million. The 57-year-old Londoner trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Hotel Rwanda in 2005. Her stage work is the dominant thread of her career: she received a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway, a BAFTA for Accused, and an Olivier Award nomination. She has appeared in the Netflix series The Split and BBC One’s Ridley Road.
She plays Ingrid Tearney in Season 5, a character who represents the institutional MI5 world that both employs and constrains the Slough House irregulars. Her casting reflects the consistent strategy of the show’s producers to bring actors of exceptional stage and screen pedigree into roles that another series might have filled with less distinguished names.
Slow Horses Cast Net Worth: Combined Analysis
The combined net worth of the main Slow Horses cast comfortably exceeds $80 million, with Oldman’s $40 million accounting for roughly half of that figure. The wealth distribution reflects the structural difference between a career spanning four decades of major international film roles and a television career of equivalent critical distinction but lower commercial scale. Pryce’s $16 million from five decades of stage and screen work and Scott Thomas’s $12 million from thirty-plus years of prestige film work both reflect career trajectories that prioritised critical quality over maximum commercial optimisation. Lowden’s approximately $3 to $5 million reflects a career that is perhaps eight to ten years from the figures that Oldman, Pryce, and Scott Thomas have accumulated.
The show’s production model, two series filmed back-to-back with Season 6 already in the can before Season 5 aired, means Apple TV+ has committed to the cast through at least Season 7. That consistency of employment, in a format that allows for deep character development across extended run-times, represents a different kind of financial relationship between actors and a streaming platform than the film model. For Gary Oldman in particular, whose Slow Horses executive producer credit adds a production stake to his acting salary, the show is both an artistic and commercial commitment. It is comfortably the most consistently critically acclaimed British spy drama since the early seasons of Le Carré adaptations. The difference is that those adaptations ended; Slow Horses keeps going, and the pace at which it is doing so, a new series each year, is as unusual in contemporary streaming as the quality it sustains.
Slow Horses Cast Net Worth: Frequently Asked Questions
What is Gary Oldman’s net worth?
Gary Oldman has an estimated net worth of $40 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He is the wealthiest cast member in Slow Horses. His wealth comes from over four decades of major film roles including the Harry Potter franchise as Sirius Black, the Dark Knight trilogy as Commissioner Gordon, Darkest Hour as Winston Churchill for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He is also an executive producer on Slow Horses, giving him a production stake in the series beyond his acting salary.
When did Slow Horses Season 5 come out?
Slow Horses Season 5 premiered on Apple TV+ on 24 September 2025, with new episodes dropping weekly. The finale aired on 29 October 2025. The season adapts Mick Herron’s novel London Rules, the fifth book in the Slough House series. Season 6 had already finished filming before Season 5’s premiere, and Season 7 was expected to begin filming in October 2025.
How many series of Slow Horses are there?
There have been five series of Slow Horses as of October 2025, with the show renewed through a seventh series. Each season adapts one of Mick Herron’s Slough House novels. The production shoots two series back-to-back, meaning Season 6 was already filmed before Season 5 aired. Series 6 adapts Joe Country and Slough House, and Series 7 adapts Bad Actors.
What is Kristin Scott Thomas’s net worth?
Kristin Scott Thomas has an estimated net worth of $12 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. She plays Diana Taverner, the MI5 Second Desk and from Season 5 First Desk and Director General, across all five seasons of Slow Horses. She is best known for her Oscar-nominated role in The English Patient and her appearances in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Gosford Park, Darkest Hour, and Fleabag Season 2.