Back in season one of Friends, the six leads were earning a modest $22,500 per episode, but hardly the kind of paycheck that screams “global phenomenon.”
Fast-forward to the final seasons, and that number ballooned to a staggering $1 million per episode each. But the real twist? The money didn’t stop when the cameras did.
Decades after the finale, Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc are still pulling in around $20 million a year, each, thanks to reruns we keep streaming, bingeing and falling asleep to.
There’s something poetic about that staying power. After Matthew Perry’s passing, Lisa Kudrow revisited the show with fresh eyes, no longer critiquing every scene but finally appreciating what they created together.
And maybe that’s the magic of Friends: it’s not just a relic of ‘90s TV, it’s a living, looping time capsule we keep returning to… and paying for, over and over again!
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