Each member of the Friends cast still makes $20 million a year

Created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, Friends made its debut in September 1994, running a decade that consisted of 236 total episodes.

The six core cast members of Friends – Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, and Matt LeBlanc — co-starred in the sitcom until season 10 in 2004.

During the show's first season, each cast member made $22,500 per episode. The following season, season 2, their pay was increased to $40,000 for each episode.

Then the cast members received $75,000 per episode in season 3 and $85,000 per episode in season 4.

After a $15,000 per episode increase for season 5, Warner Bros. gave a $25,000 increase to all cast members for season 6.

Season 7 - 8 jumped to $750,000 per episode for each core cast member.

The final two seasons of Friends, seasons 9 and 10, the cast agreed to a $1 million-per-episode deal. By the end of season 10 alone, the cast made a total of $22 million.

According to a 2015 report made by USA Today, the Friends cast still makes around $20 million a year each. This is a result of royalties made by the contracts they agreed upon in the past.

Iconic Television Series

A survey was conducted by New York Daily News that revealed that Friends was voted as the greatest TV show ever produced in the mainstream media. However, other reports from different media outlets agree that the show was iconic, but point out that Friends was only Number One for only one year of its ten-season run. Still, it averaged around 20 plus million viewers each season.