Marta Kauffman’s Two Cents on ‘Friends’ Cast Salaries

Co-created by Marta Kauffman, Friends aired its last episode in May 2004 and during the last two seasons the cast was paid a whooping $1 million per episode. Marta was recently present at the Netflix show runners panel at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour where she expressed that the salaries were “kinda ridiculous”. The cast started out with a salary of around $22,000 per episode and had a gracious increase with every season since.

Marta said, “A million dollars an episode, let’s be honest, that’s kinda ridiculous. That’s a lot of money. It’s inflated. And there’s something unrealistic about it … If someday the cast says, ‘we’re worth more than you’re offering,’ then we’ll deal with it then. At this point, everybody’s in and everybody’s in wholeheartedly”.

Friends lead cast included Matthew Perry, Courtney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, David Scwimmer and Jennifer Aniston. It was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman. The series had 10 seasons that started in 1994 and accumulated several Emmy and Screen Actors Guild awards.