Lisa Kudrow has revealed that she and her fellow “Friends” co-stars still earn a whopping $20 million in residuals every year, more than two decades after the hit sitcom came to an end.
The Emmy-winning actress divulged the staggering amount she and the cast still earn from “Friends” while reflecting on the iconic show in an interview published by The Times of London last Thursday.
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 sitcom following co-star Matthew Perry’s tragic passing in 2023 at 54.
“After Matthew died, I watched the show again,” the 62-year-old shared. “Before, I only saw what I did wrong or could have done better. But for the first time, I truly appreciated just how great it was.”
She continued, “Because there was a genius at work. And whatever any of us do in the future, we will never experience something like that again.”
While Kudrow “felt [she] did OK” as Phoebe, she praised Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox’s “amazing” portrayals of Rachel Green and Monica Geller.
She also gushed about David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc’s hilarious work as Ross Geller and Joey Tribbiani, respectively — before acknowledging that Perry “was just beyond [them] all” as the witty and often sarcastic Chandler Bing.
While Kudrow recognized that “Friends” depicted “a kind of innocence that maybe a younger generation has never gotten to experience,” she revealed that “there was definitely mean stuff going on behind the scenes” of the show.
Although the six co-stars were all friends in real life, and famously went from earning $22,500 per episode during Season 1 to $1 million per episode during Seasons 9 and 10, they still butted heads with the show’s writers.
“Don’t forget we were recording in front of a live audience of 400, and if you messed up one of these writers’ lines or it didn’t get the perfect response, they could be like, ‘Can’t the bitch f–king read? She’s not even trying. She f–ked up my line,’” Kudrow explained.
“And we know that back in the room, the guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies about Jennifer and Courteney,” she added. “It was intense.”
But the alleged “sexual fantasies about” Aniston and Cox didn’t go unnoticed, because former “Friends” assistant Amaani Lyle filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Warner Bros. Television over the purported remarks in 2004.
Lyle ultimately lost the case, however.
“Oh, it could be brutal, but these guys – and it was mostly men in there – were sitting up until 3 a.m. trying to write the show,” Kudrow said.
“So my attitude was, ‘Say what you like about me behind my back because then it doesn’t matter,’” she added.
Page Six has reached out to reps for Aniston, Cox and co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane for comment.
Meanwhile, Kudrow said she “will never say anything bad about ‘Friends’” because the sitcom is “still incredible work” 22 years after ending.
“There are plenty of shows with big-name comedians from that time, and they are not funny, but ‘Friends’ is,” she concluded.
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