Lisa Kudrow Reveals Friends Cast Still Earns Around $20 Million a Year and She’s Just as Shocked as We Are
By Alexus Mosley
Turns out Friends isn’t just timeless, it’s also incredibly profitable. In a recent interview with The Times, Lisa Kudrow revealed that she and her fellow cast members are still earning an estimated $20 million per year in residuals from the beloved sitcom… more than two decades after its finale.
Yes, you read that right.
Kudrow (who starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, and the late Matthew Perry) joked that the massive payday might simply come down to one thing: “Because Phoebe Buffay was so great?”
But in reality, Kudrow credits the show’s enduring appeal and the cast’s chemistry for its continued success. After Perry’s passing in 2023, she revisited the series with fresh eyes. “Before, I only saw what I did wrong,” she admitted. “But for the first time, I truly appreciated just how great it was.”
And while she gave herself a modest “I did OK,” her praise for her castmates was anything but reserved. Aniston and Cox? “Amazing.” Schwimmer and LeBlanc? “Had me laughing so hard.” And Perry? “Just beyond us all.” Kudrow also pointed out something deeper: Friends captured a kind of lightness that feels rare today.
“There are plenty of shows with big-name comedians from that time, and they are not funny,” she said. “But Friends is.”
Of course, the cast’s financial story is just as iconic as the show itself. They famously negotiated as a unit, going from $22,500 per episode in season one to a groundbreaking $1 million per episode by the final seasons. It’s a move that helped redefine TV salaries. Still, for Kudrow, the legacy goes far beyond the money. “There was a genius at work,” she said of Perry’s portrayal of Chandler Bing. “Whatever any of us do in the future, we will never experience something like that again.”
And perhaps that’s the real reason Friends continues to resonate and pay out decades later.