Former Nickelodeon star Josh Peck reveals amount he was paid for Drake & Josh
Josh Peck has opened up about his Drake & Josh days nearly two decades after the series wrapped, and revealed his overall pay for doing the popular Nickelodeon show.
Peck, who was one half of the duo that contained Drake Bell and featured the likes of iCarly’s Miranda Cosgrove, Nancy Sillivan and Jonathan Goldstein, has come on our to talk about showbiz.
The actor, who previously joined the cast of Amanda Bynes’ The Amanda Show from 2002 till 2002 before landing his own show with Bell, shared on the Financial Tea with Mrs. Dow Jones podcast that he started off with a $3,000 (£2272.56) payment per episode on Bynes’ show before his rate increased as he began his series.
However, if you thought he was raking in the cash, think again.
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In 2022, Peck claimed his mum ‘had a used BMW five series’ to drive the family around while they lived in a two-bedroom apartment.
“We lived a very middle-class life,” he said at the time on the Trading Secrets podcast.
This was the life he was living whilst on the Nickelodeon show.
Then, when it was over, what he’d accumulated wasn’t exactly a fortune.
He explained on the Dow Jones show on Thursday (25th June): “And then by the time we finished Drake & Josh — so that was 60 episodes total for the whole show —the median rate, the average rate per episode was about $15,000. So over four years, we wound up making about 900 grand.”
However, that 900 grand (about £680,000 for us UK people) needed to take some other expenses into account.
“We probably, between agent, manager and taxes, we cleared half of that,” he said, but reveals he’s not complaining.
“We were making about $125,000 (£94689.80) a year. And people always will say, ‘Well, compared to so many other tougher jobs, like who are you to say anything?’ And I go, ‘I’m not,’” he said on the show, explaining that the reason he brings it up is to stop the misconception that child stars are loaded.
“The only reason I say it is because people always assume that it’s so much more and why would you ever have to work again? But of course, if you made the salary of a dentist or something like that, you couldn’t just stop working after four years.”
He said there’s ‘no residuals’ in children’s television, which is the fee some actors receive for re-runs of their projects.
Even though the show continued to play on TV, this would mean that Peck, nor Bell, would make a penny from the extra screen time.
Are you shocked by this?
Topics: TV and Film, Celebrity, Money, Podcast
Britt Jones