How Much The Friends Cast Makes From Reruns

"Friends" made six talented sitcom actors very, very rich. For 10 whole seasons, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, and Matthew Perry (who died at the age of 54 in 2023) were the tight-knit group of the NBC sitcom, and they earned a pretty penny for the gig. At the late-game heights of the show's powers, the cast of "Friends" got paid as much as $1 million per episode each. 

Here's the thing, though: The money didn't stop coming after the show ended in 2004. In fact, as of 2015, the syndicated sitcom continued to rake in an estimated $1 billion annually, which in turn may have continued to earn each of the six stars as much as $20 million per year in residual payments. Though unconfirmed by either Warner Bros. or the actors, this figure most recently turned up in the wake of Perry's passing, and since "Friends" has remained a popular and surprisingly relevant show, it does make sense that the residuals continue to be hefty. Even if they aren't as massive as $20 million a year, let's be honest: even a fraction of that sum would be gangbusters money for a job that ended two decades ago. 

It's not just the main cast that's made a bundle from "Friends." Speaking to The Guardian in 2019, Vincent Ventresca — who played Monica's (Cox) boyfriend "Fun Bobby" in seasons 1 and 2 — revealed that, up to that point, he had been making thousands of dollars a year in residuals from the show alone. "Every time I get a check I think to myself: 'Wow, they [the main cast] must be really rich,'" he explained. "I get about $2,000 a year in residuals, and I only did two episodes."

Doing a little math, it seems that even actors who only appeared on a single episode of "Friends" were making at least $1,000 a year in residuals up to 2019. (Presumably, that number has decreased since then with the rise of streaming, although the gains from the joint writers and actors' strikes in 2023 have surely helped in that respect.) In that same Guardian interview, Jane Sibbett, who played Ross' (Schwimmer) first ex-wife Carol Willick in 15 episodes of "Friends," didn't name any specific figures but said she was "quite content" with her residuals from the series, stating, "I was able to raise my children, and I got offered some really sweet projects.

Out of all the supporting players on "Friends," however, it's possible that the late James Michael Tyler made the most when it came to pre-streaming residuals, having played Gunther, the manager of the Central Perk coffee house where the leads liked to hang out, in a whopping 147 episodes of the sitcom. Speaking with Bang Showbiz NZ two years prior to his death in 2021, Tyler revealed that he'd actually earned very little from the first season of the show since he was a non-speaking extra at the time. As a result, he had to make ends meet by serving as "an actual barista in a coffee shop called The Bourgeois Pig in Hollywood" between seasons 1 and 2. Of course, his life changed dramatically after that.

The secret sauce of "Friends" and its longevity is simple, really. The show resonates with viewers, and while it was never the kind of critical darling "Seinfeld" was, it did receive consistently good reviews. Thanks to its copious reruns, it has also remained accessible over the years. It doesn't hurt that "Friends" is a great go-to sitcom comfort show during difficult times and has been able to turn its significant pop culture presence into an enduring popularity. This makes the series an absolute workhorse that any platform would no doubt love to have. 

Just look at the way the show has performed during the streaming era. "Friends" continued to be there for you on Netflix when the platform first licensed the series for $30 million a year. In 2019, it agreed to bump the fee to $100 million before the streaming wars separated the show and the U.S. leg of Netflix in January 2020. After that, "Friends" moved to HBO Max and soon became its top dog. 

The show even managed to hit a fresh bullseye with 2021's unscripted "Friends: The Reunion" special, a predictably huge hit that was watched by 29% of all streaming households in the U.S. on the day it dropped (May 27). It also earned each of the six cast members a cool $2.5 million, minimum. It may not always be easy to play a main character on a classic sitcom, but it certainly is lucrative ... and it seems to remain that way long after the show is over.