Ok Wow, The 'Friends' Cast Got Paid So Much For Their Reunion Special

In case you're the one person in the world who missed it, the cast of Friends got together for a celeb-packed reunion special over on HBO Max. And, um, they did not do it for free. Apparently HBO shelled out some major money to get Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc on board for the special. How much, you asked? That'd be *at least* $2.5 million EACH, according to Variety (via Us Weekly), who originally reported this news all the way back in 2020 when the reunion was first announced.

This is obviously a huge amount of money, and actually DOUBLE what the cast was making per episode during their peak on the series. We have a season-by-season money breakdown this way, but here are some highlights: After the explosive popularity of seasons 1 and 2, the cast negotiated as a team and made $75,000 per episode in season 3, $85,000 per episode in season 4, $100,000 per episode in season 5, $125,000 per episode in season 6, and $750,000 in seasons 7 and 8.

But in seasons 9 and 10? They started making a whopping $1 million per episode, raking in $24,000,000 total per person for season 9 and another $18,000,000 total per person for season 10. On top of that, they get a cut (two percent!) of syndication profits, which can be as high as $20 million annually.

In other words: THEY! ARE! RICH!

***

This article originally appeared on Cosmopolitan.com. Minor edits have been made by the Cosmo.ph editors.

[ArticleReco:{"articles":["77587","77453","77360","77487"], "widget":"More from cosmo"}]

Source: Cosmo PH