20 years on from the end of Friends, the main cast still make an absolute fortune from the show and it’s all due to a unique deal they negotiated.
Many of the lead actors from the show continue to be wildly successful to this day, with Jennifer Aniston being in the midst of press for a fourth season of Apple TV+’s The Morning Show.
This led the actor to make a rare comment about the tragic death of Friends co-star Matthew Perry, saying that in some way, his passing was ‘better for him’.
Perry’s death at the age of 54 led to a joint statement between the stars of the hit TV show, saying they were ‘utterly devastated’.
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Aniston, Perry, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer have all spoken at various points about the friendship and bond they all shared as a result of the TV show, which ran for ten seasons.
The finale, The Last One, was the most-watched episode of the 2000s with 52.5 million viewers in America alone.
The success of the show saw the cast band together in contract negotiations from the third season onwards, initially leading Aniston and Schwimmer to take a pay cut to fall in line with their co-stars.
This move was deeply profitable along the line, however, leading them to receive a massive $1 million per episode for the final two seasons.
One of the main ways actors profit from shows after they end is syndication, receiving payments every time the show goes on TV.
These reduce with each subsequent viewing, however, and reduce with each year passing from the show’s air.
In addition to this, the pay is relative to your salary at the time of the episode, so reruns of earlier seasons would be based on the earlier salaries of $25,000 per episode.
On top of this, as actors on The Office have spoken about, syndication for streaming is a much newer invention as a way to share profits, and even now, usually sees lump sums rather than regular income.
The actors from Friends, however, were clearly ahead of their time when they negotiated their deals, with each of the main six actors reportedly earning 2% of the show’s syndication revenue each year.
USA Today reports that the $1 billion a year the show rakes in, if you include streaming deals, equates to roughly $20 million a year for each of the main stars of the show.
Due to the show’s near constant repeats on TV though, the main stars are not the only ones to profit.
Vincent Ventresca, who played ‘Fun Bobby’ in just two episodes, revealed in 2019 that he still gets $2,000 a year from syndication cheques.
James Michael Tyler, the late actor who played Gunther, appeared in the most episodes of any non-core cast member, 147.
He said of his syndication cheques for the show: "I'm very happy if I get a residual cheque. I do get residuals. I wasn't paid a million dollars an episode, of course, that would be a completely different story.
"I'm paid for episodes I spoke in and it's a sliding scale, I don't know how it works. I'm fortunate to have a supplement into my income because of Friends, however, I'm still a working actor."
Topics: Friends, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, Money, TV and Film, TV
Michael Slavin