Matthew Perry discloses real pay cheques of ‘Friends’ cast

Matthew Perry shared how much he and his castmates at Friends earned over the years from the show in his new memoir, Friends, Lovers, & the Big Terrible Thing.

The actor portrayed the role of the goofy and sweet Chandler for almost a decade on the popular sitcom Friends which premiered in 1994. According to Variety, Perry made $22,500 from the pilot episode but proceeded to make almost a million dollars a week.

Perry credited his costar David Schwimmer, who helped with the increase by not asking for more money for himself when he could have.

“It was a decision that proved to be extremely lucrative down the line,” wrote Perry. “David had certainly been in a position to go for the most money, and he didn’t. I would like to think that I would have made the same move, but as a greedy twenty-five-year-old, I’m not sure I would have.”

“But his decision served to make us take care of each other through what turned out to be a myriad of stressful network negotiations, and it gave us a tremendous amount of power,” he added. “By season eight, we were making a million dollars per episode; by season ten we were making even more. We were making $1,100,040 an episode, and we were asking to do fewer episodes.”

The actor, 53, then cheekily added, “Morons, all of us. We had David’s goodness, and his astute business sense, to thank for what we had been offered. I owe you about $30 million, David. (We were still morons.)”