Friends ended over 20 years ago. The paychecks, however, never stopped.

More than two decades after Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross, Joey, and Chandler said goodbye to each other and to millions of fans around the world, the cast ofFriendsis still cashing some very significant checks. In a recent interview with The Times of London, Lisa Kudrow seemingly confirmed what many had long suspected: she and her Friends co-stars are still receiving $20 million per year in residuals, following their decade of dominating primetime television.

That figure is staggering by any measure. It comes more than two decades after the show finished its 10-year run from 1994 to 2004. The cast, which included Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, and the late Matthew Perry, effectively went from unknowns to some of the highest-paid actors ontelevisionover the course of the show. They started at $22,500 per episode and reached $1 million per episode by the final seasons, with Kudrow reportedly taking a lead role in those collective salary discussions with the network.

But what makes the $20 million figure remarkable is not where it came from. It’s that it’s still coming at all. Despite wrapping in 2004, Friends has never really faded from popularity and continues to draw new audiences with eachgeneration, with strong syndication and streaming deals keeping it at the forefront of comfort viewing. In the US, reruns still air on Nick at Night and TBS. In the UK, it remains one of the most-watched shows on streaming. In Nepal and across South Asia, Friends has been a gateway into American pop culture for millions of young viewers who discovered it years after it first aired.

When Kudrow was asked why she thinks the show has stuck around so stubbornly, she offered two answers. The jokey one: “Because Phoebe Buffay was so great?” The sincere one was far more moving. She told The Times that Friends captured a kind of magic that maybe a younger generation has never got to experience.

The interview also gave Kudrow theopportunityto reflect on her late co-star Matthew Perry, who passed away in 2023. After his passing, Kudrow re-watched the show and for the first time truly appreciated how great it was, praising Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox for their performances, and describing Perry as being simply beyond them all. “There was a genius at work,” she said of his performance as Chandler Bing. “Whatever any of us do in the future, we will never experience something like that again.”

It is a bittersweet reminder that behind the numbers, behind the residuals and the records and the pop culture legacy, Friends was ultimately about six people who made something genuinely special together. The money is remarkable. The memories, it turns out, are worth even more.

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