The cast of Friends continues to be among the wealthiest actors in TV history thanks to their truly jaw-dropping residual earnings.
The Times reports that Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc earn millions per year. Specifically, $20 million a year each in residual income. Lisa Kudrow’s theory about why: “Because Phoebe Buffay was so great?”
This is obviously a hugeeeee amount of money, but not exactly shocking considering what the cast was paid when the show was on the air. Lisa, Jennifer, Courteney, David, and Matt made relatively small amounts of money for Friends Seasons 1 and 2 since the show was brand new, but the cast negotiated ahead of Season 3 and secured themselves $75,000 per episode. Their salaries only went up from there: they were making $85,000 per episode in Season 4, $100,000 per episode in Season 5, $125,000 per episode in Season 6, and then got a huge jump to $750,000 per episode in Seasons 7 and 8.
Things only escalated from there, and in Season 9 and Season 10 they were making a whopping $1 million per episode. They also negotiated a 2% cut of syndication profits, and got $2.5 million EACH (according to Variety), for their reunion episode.
Welp! I’ll just be sitting here with my piggy bank from 3rd grade hoping for the best.
