Inside Matthew Perry’s multimillion-dollar deal with Friends co-stars

Matthew Perry was key to a history-making, multimillion-dollar TV deal with his Friends co-stars, helping them achieve a groundbreaking feat.

The cast of Friends began their careers on the hit sitcom in 1994 each making a modest $US22,000 per episode.

That figure had catapulted to $US750,000 each by the seventh season a few short years later, which in the late ‘90s, was almost unheard of.

But the power of Friends hit even greater levels come 2002, with the ‘big six’ pulling off a history-making feat when they negotiated a whopping $US1 million salary each per half-hour episode. Adjusted for inflation, that would be almost $US1.7 million ($A2.68m), a fee rarely offered to television actors then or now.

Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and the late Matthew Perry, who died suddenly on Sunday aged 54, banded together early on when they started collective bargaining for the third season of the NBC sitcom in 1997.

This early agreement saw both Aniston and Schwimmer, who were making slightly more than their co-stars at the time, take a pay cut to ensure they were all compensated equally in-line with the show’s success.

While the duo took a financial hit at the time, it would go on to pay off in the long run ahead of the commissioning of season 9, when they managed to pull off the unthinkable coup.

Inside the biggest TV deal: How the cast of Friends managed to make history. Picture: NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

All six stars were considering moving on from Friends, which had a blockbuster eighth season, averaging 24.5 million viewers a week – the highest viewership recorded since its second season.

NBC had been trialling news shows in an attempt to fill the void Friends would leave if it wasn’t renewed, but none came close to the comedy’s popularity – both commercially and on a global pop culture scale.

Timing played massively into the stars’ favour. They were negotiating their contracts when there were just four scripts left to be written as part of season 8. If it was to be the last season, the writers’ had to know quickly if they would need to wrap things up for a finale.

Secondly, NBC’s Upfronts event was looming, and without Friends on its forthcoming programming schedule, ad expenditure would’ve taken a tremendous hit.

But ultimately, what proved to be the key in scoring a never-before-achieved contract was Aniston, Cox, Kudrow, Schwimmer, Perry and LeBlanc’s combined approach.

Friends could prosper a little longer with just one character exit, maybe even two, but it was dormant without all six.

And so, they each inked a deal to make $US1 million per episode for the show’s two final seasons – a history-making precedent at the time (the cast of the Big Bang Theory would later go on to use similar negotiating tactics for their own $US1m salaries in 2014.)

Years later, in 2015, Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman was still in shock over how the cast was able to command such lucrative salaries.

“A million dollars an episode is kinda ridiculous,” Kaufmann said at an event at the time. “Let’s be honest, that’s a lot of money.”

While it’s been almost two decades since Friends wrapped in 2004, their sharp negotiation skills ensured their 10-year run would be profitable for the remainder of their lives.

The cast have remained friends in the two decades since. Picture: Instagram

Friends set a precedent for cast salaries.

USA Today reported in 2015 that Warner Bros. continues to earn about $US1 billion a year from re-runs of Friends, in which the ‘big six’ pocket around $US20 million each from after they negotiated syndication payments back in season 6.

More recent reports suggest that figure has grown more than double, with Forbes estimating in 2021 the core cast was earning $US260 million through syndication, based on data provided by S&P Global and conversations with sources close to the deals.

Their ability to secure syndication fees was a huge deal at the time, and was traditionally a perk offered to stars who had ownership rights in a show.

It’s why Perry, whose death has sent shockwaves around the world, had a staggering personal fortune up until his sudden death at the weekend.

Perry, who reportedly died of an apparent drowning, left behind a net worth of $US120 million, despite stepping away from acting over the past decade.

He made his big TV comeback in the heartwarming Friends: The Reunion special released in 2021, which streams locally on Binge, where each cast member was paid $US2.5 million.

Meanwhile, Perry’s fellow lead cast members are yet to speak out about his death, as they inevitably come to terms with the shock and sadness of the loss of their friend and colleague.

The cast’s close-knit bond was well and truly on-show during the recent reunion feature, with Perry breaking down in tears as he discussed their special friendship.

“The best way that I can describe it is after the show was over, at a party or any social gathering, if one of us bumped into each other that was it, that was the end of the night, you just sat with that person all night long,” Perry said to his co-stars.

“You apologised to the people that you were with but they had to understand, you had met somebody special to you and you were going to talk to that person for the rest of the night.

“That’s the way it worked. It’s certainly the way it worked for all of us.

“I’m going to cry now.”

Originally published as Inside Matthew Perry’s multimillion-dollar deal with Friends co-stars