Writers David Crane and Marta Kauffman were quietly confident that the sitcom pilot they had pitched to NBC would be a moderate success – at least not quite as disastrous as a similar project they were working on in parallel for Fox.
Friends hit our screens on September 22 1994 with initial audience numbers encouraging but nothing to suggest what the show would become – one of the highest-rated television shows of all time.
What the Friends cast earned during season 1
The six cast members: Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green), Courteney Cox (Monica Geller), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay), Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani), Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing) and David Schwimmer (Ross Geller) – a group of 20-somethings living in a Manhattan apartment block while trying to make their way in life, were relatively unknown.
“In 1994, MTV had already been full blown and I think the country was ready for a show about young people and what are their dreams and what are their lives like,” [executive producer] Kevin Bright explained.
Apart from Courteney Cox who had appeared in The Trouble with Larry and Seinfeld, the rest were looking for their first big break in television. That was reflected in the pay checks they received for the entire first season of 24 episodes which ran from September 22, 1994 to May 18, 1995.
The six cast members earned $22,500 per episode during the first season. By season 2, which launched in September 1995, at least two members of the cast (reportedly, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer) had negotiated a pay rise and were taking home $40,000 per episode.
Friends stars bargained for equal pay in 1996
The show’s popularity surged and by season 3, the show’s stars had instructed their agents to renegotiate their contracts – ensuring they were all paid equal amounts. All six made $75,000 for each of the 25 episodes which aired from September 1996 to May 1997.
They received a $10,000 raise the following year, taking their pay to $85,000 per episode for Season 4, then $100,000 per episode for Season 5, and $125,000 for Season 6.
By the time of seasons 7 and 8, their salaries had increased to $750,000 per episode, before hitting the magical $1,000,000 figure for the final two seasons. But long before the final episode aired on May 6, 2004, the cast also began receiving a 2 percent cut of syndication profits ($20 million each annually) – and not forgetting the $2.5 million for appearing in the HBO Max reunion special in May 2021.
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