Billed as an ensemble show from the beginning, every cast member had the same salary. However, in renegotiations in the second season Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer were earning significantly more per episode, as their characters and their burgeoning relationship were seen as the central narrative hook to the show. In a television first, all six members of the case got together to collectively negotiate their salary for the third season, directly going against their employers usual practices of negotiating salaries separately and in secret. The word is that they were encouraged to do so by David Schwimmer's mother, a high-powered divorce lawyer whose car's licence plate reads EX BARRACUDA. In agreeing to their demands, Warner Bros Television forced the condition that all of the main cast would be paid the expected salary of the lowest-paid of the six meaning that Schwimmer and Aniston took a pay cut on behalf of their four friends. More than that, all six made sure to agree on which awards categories they would enter themselves in, and attempted to have themselves featured as a group on magazine features on the show wherever possible. Schwimmer, in fact, had only agreed to appear on the show at all if it was an ensemble piece, having had his fingers burned with network television before. By the final season, their collective bargaining had netted them a million dollars an episode, from $22,000 apiece in season one. Thats a pay rise of 4,445% in nine years. From the fifth season, all six actors received a small fraction of the extremely lucrative back end profits as well something unheard of for an ensemble cast with no ownership rights to the programme.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
