The "Friends" Cast Still Makes Millions A Year

Worried that your favorite Friends actors who aren’t working as consistently as Jennifer Aniston are going broke and will one day have to appear on a show with the prefix or suffix “Celebrity” to earn a quick check? You already know that’s never going to happen,  but People confirmed that Jen along with Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer get millions upon millions richer every year thanks to Friends reruns.

It has been fourteen years since Friends went off the air, but that won’t stop these actors from pulling in millions of dollars of residuals. It’s reported that the cast still receive 2 percent of the syndication income from the series. If you’re still old-school and have cable television you’ll know that shit is still on TV all the time, and all 10 seasons were acquired by Netflix, who had to adjust their payments to keep the show on their streaming service through 2019.

That cost Netflix around $100 million dollars; so there’s a bit more pocket change for the cast. Oh, and Netflix had previously paid $30 million for a year of the show, so Warner Bros. decided to up their rates. That’s how they get you–on the re-up. But don’t worry Netflix employees who will be going hungry to supplement the additional $70 million dollars Warner Bros. was charging: after 2019 Friends won’t be streaming exclusively on Netflix so the rate will go down. Although Warner’s parent company, AT&T, is making it’s own streaming service and may want exclusive rights of the series by then.

So what does all of this equal up to exactly in terms of the number of zeroes on these actors’ checks? Well Warner Bros. brings in about $1 billion (that’s with a B) each year, so 2 percent of  $1 billion rounds out to about $20 million each a year. It makes you wonder why Jennifer spends all that time shilling eye drops?

So there you have it people. Hopefully you too one day get on a show which is wildly popular for 10 years and then retire and live a life of luxury cashing $20 million checks at the end of each year because you worked really hard 14 years earlier. Ahh, the American Dream.

Pic: Getty/Warner Bros.

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