The creator of Friends says the cast received “ridiculous” salaries

You can’t deny that the TV series Friends was kind of a big deal back in the day. In the early 2000s the cast of the show decided to make the most of their success.

They group famously negotiated their way to be on the receiving end of $1 million per episode. Today that would be just under €1 million, in case you were wondering.

Series creator Marta Kauffman was recently discussing her latest Netflix venture Grace and Frankie when she told reporters that the size of the pay cheques the cast were getting were “kinda ridiculous”.

When asked about the difference between running her current show and her previous sitcom, she pointed out that the kind of money the Friends cast could negotiate was more than any other series at the time.

“A million dollars an episode is kinda ridiculous. Let’s be honest, that’s a lot of money.,” she told the Television Critics Association.

She said that on her current TV series it would be “unrealistic” for that kind of cash to be spent for every episode they produce. Marta explained “that was a case where the cast knew how valuable the show was to the network in terms of the advertisers."

When Friends first began in 1994, the six cast members were each paid a more modest €20,000 per episode. As the series began to grow more and more popular until it became something of a pop culture phenomenon, the cast started demanding they be paid more.

By the time the last series of episodes were on the air in 2003 they were each receiving €1 million each per episode.

While the series still remains fiercely popular, it doesn’t look like the die-hard fans will be getting their much longed for reunion. Earlier this year Matt LeBlanc told the Huffington Post that “he didn’t see it happening.”

We’ll be waiting, if it ever does happen..