The remaining cast of Friends still make a heck of a lot of money from the reruns.
According to the latest YouGov stats, it’s the second most streamed TV show in the UK after The Big Bang Theory as of October 2024.
It’s pretty crazy considering that Friends ended in 2004 with 10 seasons and 236 episodes.
And from syndication revenue alone, the show takes in $1 billion (£820 million) a year for Warner Bros. – which means a hefty pay check for the main cast-members, as reported by USA Today.
Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer will reportedly still make a percentage of the syndication income, while it’s unclear what the situation is for Matthew Perry following his tragic passing in 2023.
The outlet claims that the main characters earn two percent of the total income, which equates to a whopping $20 million (£16 million) a year for each actor as of 2018.
However, FOX Business reports that this could be even higher after Netflix picked up the series re-runs on its streaming site.
But as millions around the world still watch the show, I guess it’s only fair that the actors are still credited with bringing joy to so many households.
Towards the end of the show, the actors were reportedly earning upwards of $1 million (£820,000) per episode.
LeBlanc – who played Joey – was asked if he felt that he was worth that kind of money, and he gave a brilliant answer.
“Were we worth $1 million? To me, that’s such a strange question,” he told HuffPost Live. “It’s like, well, that’s irrelevant. Are you worth it?
“How do you put a price on how funny something is? We were in a position to get it.
“If you’re in a position in any job, no matter what the job is—if you’re driving a milk truck or installing TVs or an upholsterer for a couch—if you’re in a position to get a raise and you don’t get it, you’re stupid.
“You know what I mean? We were in a position and we were able to pull it off. ‘Worth it’ has nothing to do with it.”
And more recently, Schwimmer – who played Ross – said he is grateful for Friends and called it ‘the gift that keeps on giving’.
He told Good Morning America: “When I meet people on the street from another country and they say, ‘I just have to say, I learned English watching your show’, or a father stops me and says, ‘My kid was really, really ill and the one thing that kept them going in the hospital was just watching Friends’, you feel really grateful and blessed to have done something that people find fun.”
Here is the astronomical amount of money Jennifer Aniston made from her role on Friends.
Aniston, 55, is best known for her role as Rachel Green, one of the six protagonists of the NBC sitcom alongside Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, Courtney Cox, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc.
During the decade Friends was on air, viewers watched as Aniston’s character transform from a sheltered runaway bride to an independent women working in as a waitress at Central Perk before ultimately pursuing her dreams of working in the fashion industry.
Now, living in New York City is not cheap, but thankfully for Aniston her role on the show provided her with more than enough to make a comfortable living.
The exact amount of money Aniston and her co-stars brought in per episode has never been officially confirmed, however, there are numerous reports online providing us with an idea of how much it pays to be a main character on a popular TV series.
Spoiler alert, it’s a lot.
According to an Entertainment Weekly article from 2000, the cast were each paid around $75,000 (£57,225) per episode in the earlier years, which would go up as as the show’s profile – and their star power – increased.
By seasons 7 and 8, the fee is said to have risen to a whopping $750,000 (£572,283) per episode, which isn’t bad at all considering there was 24 episodes in each of the two seasons, meaning the actors would have made around $18,000,000 a season.
Which is certainly enough to comfortably afford the rent of a two bedroom apartment in West Village, which is where Rachel and Monica (Cox) lived for majority of the show.
However, this isn’t the highest salary Aniston and her co-stars were able to negotiate, with the last two seasons of Friends seeing the cast members pull in a massive $1 million (£762,050) per episode, per a report from Forbes.
The major payout caused the actors to earn the title of highest paid TV actors at the time, a record which would only be broken by the main stars of Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory in their final seasons.
These figures don’t factor in money made from royalties and residuals either, which means the cast will still be making money from a show which ended two decades ago.
With a wage like this you’d think that Aniston wouldn’t have to work again, right? However, the actress has since gone on to solidify her star power even further, negotiating a fee of $2 million (£1,982,000) an episode for her more recent series The Morning Show (according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter).
