Friends cast still cashing $20M checks as Kudrow revisits set experience

Dubai: More than 20 years after Friends aired its finale, Lisa Kudrow who played Phoebe Buffay on the show, recently revisited her time on the series in an interview with The Times of London.

A sitcom that still pays like a current hit

In her interview with The Times (which multiple outlets have since echoed), Kudrow confirmed that the Friends cast still earns around $20 million per year each in residuals from reruns and streaming.

The financial side of Friends remains almost unmatched in television history. Multiple industry reports over the years have estimated that the six main cast members, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer, continue to earn around $20 million annually.

That income is tied to a landmark contract structure negotiated during the later seasons, when the cast secured not only record-breaking per-episode salaries (eventually reaching around $1 million per episode) but also a share of backend profits from the show’s ongoing distribution.

Even decades later, the numbers haven’t slowed much. Friends continues to generate substantial revenue for Warner Bros. through streaming, reruns, and licensing deals, keeping it one of the most valuable sitcom libraries in entertainment history.

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Lisa Kudrow on the reality behind the laughter

Against that backdrop of enduring commercial success, Kudrow also has reflected on what it was like to actually work on the show during its peak years.

In the interview she described the production environment as highly intense, especially in relation to the writers’ room and the pressure surrounding live audience tapings. Her comments focused in particular on the writers’ room culture, which she described as largely male and at times emotionally harsh.

More notably, Kudrow also referenced inappropriate behaviour, saying writers would openly discuss their fantasies about female cast members Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox.

The remarks, as reported from her interview, have been widely interpreted as pointing to a workplace culture that would now be considered unacceptable in most modern writers’ rooms.

These comments resurfaced alongside earlier reporting and longstanding allegations about tensions and inappropriate workplace conduct during the Friends production years, including claims that emerged in the early 2000s when former writers’ assistant Amaani Lyle filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. over her time on the show.

While such accounts have circulated in public discourse for years, the show’s creators and network have consistently maintained that Friends operated within a professional working environment, disputing claims of systemic misconduct.