More than two decades after Friends closed the door on Monica’s apartment, Lisa Kudrow is still being paid very well for playing Phoebe Buffay. Very well, as in millions.
In a recent interview with The Times, Kudrow said she and her co-stars still earn around $20 million a year in residuals from the sitcom. Residuals are the payments actors receive when a show continues to air, stream, or sell after its original run, and Friends remains one of television’s most durable money machines.
From $22,500 to $1 million an episode
When Friends began its first season in 1994, Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc were each paid $22,500 per episode.
By the final stretch of the NBC sitcom, all six principal cast members were earning $1 million per episode. That jump did not happen by accident. The cast famously negotiated together, using their real-life bond and collective leverage to push for equal, higher pay across the board.
Kudrow was reportedly a key figure in those discussions, helping secure deals that benefited the full ensemble. The result was not just a headline-grabbing salary figure, but a long-tail financial arrangement that still matters in the streaming era.
Alongside Aniston and Cox, Kudrow became one of the highest-paid television actresses in the world at the time. Not bad for a show that began with six twenty-somethings and one aggressively orange sofa.
Why the money is still coming
Friends ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 and became one of the most commercially successful sitcoms in television history. Its continued popularity with younger viewers on streaming platforms has kept the show in circulation long after its NBC finale.
Asked why the series still generates such significant income, Kudrow gave the most Phoebe-adjacent answer possible: “Because Phoebe Buffay was so great?”
The joke lands because the business case is obvious. Friends is still watched, still licensed, and still treated as comfort television by audiences who were not old enough to see its original run, or in some cases not born yet.
Kudrow’s rewatch after Matthew Perry’s death
Kudrow, who was the first Friends cast member to win an Emmy for her performance, also spoke about revisiting the show after Matthew Perry died in 2023 at the age of 54.
She said that, before then, she struggled to watch the sitcom without focusing on her own performance.
“Before, I only saw what I did wrong or could have done better,” Kudrow said. “But for the first time, I truly appreciated just how great it was. I felt I did OK, but Jennifer and Courteney? Amazing. David and Matt? They had me laughing so hard. And then Matthew — he was just beyond us all.”
That reflection gives the residuals story a little more weight than another celebrity-money headline. Friends is still a major business asset, but for the people who made it, it is also now tied to memory, grief, and the strange experience of watching your younger self become part of television history.
Since the sitcom ended, Kudrow has continued working across television and film, with credits including The Comeback, BoJack Horseman, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Still, Phoebe Buffay remains the role that keeps paying, culturally and apparently quite literally.
