Friends star Lisa Kudrow has revealed the amount of money she and her former cast mates receive in residuals more than 20 years after the beloved sitcom ended.
The actress, along with her co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer and the late Matthew Perry, all rose to global stardom over the course of the show’s 10-season run between 1994 and 2004.
Although the six cast members reportedly started out on $22,500 per episode in season 1, they famously negotiated together to increase their salaries to $1 million per episode in the last two seasons, and earned at least $2.5 million each for featuring in the 2021 reunion episode, according to Variety.
Now, Kudrow and her co-stars earn an astounding $20 million a year in residuals when Friends is re-aired, Kudrow recently revealed in an interview with The Times.
Kudrow went on to elaborate on the show’s enduring legacy, saying that she rewatched it after Perry’s death in 2023.
“After Matthew died I watched the show again. Before, I only saw what I did wrong or could have done better, but for the first time I truly appreciated just how great it was,” she said.
She continued: “Because there was a genius at work. And whatever any of us do in the future, we will never experience something like that again. I felt I did OK, but Jennifer and Courteney? Amazing. David and Matt? They had me laughing so hard. And then Matthew – he was just beyond us all.”
Kudrow previously said she’d love to see a reboot of Friends – a topic that has long been debated by fans – but on the condition that there’s an entirely new cast.
She told Where Is the Buzz: “I don’t think there’s going to be a Friends reboot. I mean, not with any of us in it; not that Marta [Kauffman] and David [Crane] are writing.”
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“But a reboot, you mean like they hire other actors?” she continued, adding that she would be keen to see that version materialise.
“I would love to see what that would be,” she said. “That would be really good.”
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Authors
Molly Moss is a Trends Writer for Radio Times, covering the latest trends across TV, film and more. She has an MA in Newspaper Journalism and has previously written for publications including The Guardian, The Times and The Sun Online.
