We call Josh Peck a truth scholar.
The former Nickelodeon star confessed that he only made $900,000 after working on the hit comedy “Drake & Josh” for four years.
Peck said on Thursday’s episode of the podcast “Financial Tea with Mrs. Dow Jones” that she started making $3,000 an episode on “The Amanda Show” from 2000 to 2002 and landed her own role on “Drake & Josh” in 2004 with Drake Bell, Miranda Cosgrove, Nancy Sullivan and Jonathan Goldstein.
“And by the time we finished ‘Drake & Josh,’ which was a total of 60 episodes for the entire show, the average median fee per episode was about $15,000. So over four years, we ended up making about 900 grand,” he explained.
In 2006, Peck and Bell, 39, starred in the movie Drake & Josh Go Hollywood before the hit Nickelodeon series ended in 2007.
Peck stressed that while the cast “works really hard,” they don’t see all the money they earn.
“I probably got half of it cleared between my agent, manager and taxes,” he recalled.
Looking back, Peck realizes that she raised quite a bit of money.
“We were making about $125,000 a year, and people always say, ‘Well, compared to a lot of other hard work, what do you say?’ And I say, ‘No,'” he clarified.
However, the amount was far from what fans had expected.
“The only reason I say this is because people always think that work is harder and why should they go back to work? But of course if you’re making a salary like a dentist, you can’t just quit your job after four years.”
“Grandfather” alumni also felt pressure after becoming the breadwinners of their families, and pointed out that it was “ingrained in them” that they would never go back to being penniless, and that they continued to work hard “as long as they could.”
“And I felt it inside me forever,” Peck recalled, “just deep financial anxiety driving everything I did.”
In 2022, Peck revealed during an appearance on the show that he “owned a used BMW 5 Series” with his mother in a two-bedroom apartment with amenities.
“We lived a very middle-class life,” he revealed on the “Trading Secrets” podcast at the time.
He added: “There is no residue on children’s television.”
Bell echoed the sentiments of her 2025 co-stars, slamming the idea that all child stars are raking in the dough.
“That’s the perception of the world and it’s always been this way,” he said on “The Unplanned Podcast” at the time. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you made a commercial for Folgers Coffee. You must live in a mansion in Hollywood. I’ve seen you on TV. You’re rich.'”
“That’s far from the truth,” Bell said. “And especially, unfortunately for most of us at Nickelodeon, we don’t get any residue on our shows.”
