Lisa Kudrow revealed that she and her “Friends” co-stars still get a whopping $20 million in residual pay each year, more than 20 years after the hit sitcom ended.
In an interview published in the London Times last Thursday, the Emmy Award-winning actress looked back on the iconic show and revealed the staggering amount of money she and her cast still make on Friends.
Kudrow, who played the eccentric and kind-hearted Phoebe Buffay for all 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004, told the outlet that she rewatched the long-running NBC comedy after co-star Matthew Perry tragically passed away at age 54 in 2023.
“I watched the show again after Matthew passed away,” the 62-year-old said. “Before, all I thought was that I was wrong and that I could have done better. But for the first time, I truly understood how amazing it was.”
She continued, “Because genius was at work, and whatever we do in the future, we will never experience anything like it again.”
Kudrow “felt well done” as Phoebe, while praising Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox’s “amazing” portrayals of Rachel Green and Monica Geller.
She also gushed about the hilarious work of David Schwimmer, who played Ross Geller, and Matt LeBlanc, who played Joey Tribbiani, and admitted that Perry, who played the witty and often sarcastic Chandler Bing, was “above them all.”
While Kudrow acknowledged that Friends depicts “a kind of innocence that the younger generation probably hasn’t experienced,” he revealed that “there were definitely some sneaky things going on behind the scenes” on the show.
The six co-stars, all friends in real life, famously went from making $22,500 per episode in Season 1 to $1 million per episode in Seasons 9 and 10, but they still clashed with the show’s writers.
“Remember, we were recording in front of a live audience of 400 people. If you mess up these writers’ lines or don’t get the perfect reaction, they might say, ‘Can’t this damn woman read? She’s not even trying. She messed up my lines,'” Kudrow explained.
“And we know that when they got back to the room, the guys were talking about their sexual fantasies about Jennifer and Courtney late into the night,” she added. “It was intense.”
But allegations of “sexual fantasies” about Aniston and Cox didn’t go unnoticed, and in 2004, former “Friends” assistant Amaani Lyle filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Warner Bros. Television over the comments.
However, Lyle ultimately lost the case.
“Oh, it may be cruel, but these guys, and it was mostly men there, stayed up until 3 a.m. writing the show,” Kudrow said.
“So my attitude was, ‘Just tell me what you like about me behind my back and I’ll be fine,'” she added.
Page Six has reached out to representatives for Aniston, Cox, and co-creators Marta Kaufman and David Crane for comment.
Meanwhile, Kudrow said he would “never say anything bad about ‘Friends,'” as the sitcom is still “a great show” 22 years after it ended.
“There are a lot of shows with big comedians of the time that aren’t funny, but ‘Friends’ is funny,” she concluded.
