How Much Money A-List Actors Really Make From Rerun Residuals

It's every actor's dream after landing in Hollywood: star on a show that becomes popular enough for fans to watch it over and over again. Or alternatively, for new generations to discover. Traditionally, rebroadcasting shows on network television after their initial airing earned the nickname "rerun," but nowadays, reruns can take many forms. Existing shows can be syndicated, purchased by streaming services, released on DVD, and more.

Imagine acting on a single series, then sitting back collecting paychecks in perpetuity as that show airs repeatedly over decades. Indeed, that scenario definitely can and does happen. In some cases, the residual checks, sometimes called royalties, can far exceed the amount that an actor was originally paid for their work. On the other hand, some actors on tremendously popular and iconic shows receive fairly little in residuals.

One of the most well-known examples of lucrative rerun royalties is the NBC sitcom "Friends," which ran from 1994 to 2004. During its original airing, "Friends" regularly drew audiences of more than 20 million people per episode. By the way, if you're wondering how much Monica's iconic apartment is worth, we've got you covered.

In 2015, USA Today learned — through taking a VIP studio tour — that "Friends" was pulling in a cool $1 billion per year for producer Warners Brothers in syndication income. Of that $1 billion per year, each of the show's six stars was entitled to 2%. That might not seem significant at first glance, but 2% of $1 billion is $20 million per actor in passive income for literally doing nothing.

Of course, you can't discuss NBC's "Friends" without also touching on another show from the same era: the mega-popular "Seinfeld." When originally filmed, the show's eponymous star Jerry Seinfeld reportedly earned a modest $20,000 per episode at the beginning of the series. As the show exploded in popularity, Seinfeld's salary continued to rise, too, peaking at $1 million per episode in the show's final (ninth) season. At the time, $1 million per episode made Jerry Seinfeld the highest-paid actor in television, but those earnings would pale in comparison to what would later come from syndication.

According to Forbes, Jerry Seinfeld and "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David each negotiated a 15% ownership stake in the hit show. During the period between 1998 and 2013, "Seinfeld" produced a whopping $3 billion in income from being shown in syndication. That's equal to $450 million each for Seinfeld and David. Not to mention a more recent 2019 deal with Netflix for $500 million to acquire streaming rights.

The other "Seinfeld" stars, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards, don't have an ownership stake in the show. However, they're still entitled to syndication royalties per the Screen Actors Guild industry standards. While a lot less than Seinfeld and David, that's still rumored to be between $1 million and several million dollars per year. (On that note, here's how much background actors really get paid.)

In summary, how much actors like Jerry Seinfeld and Jennifer Aniston earn from reruns is hugely dependent on what kind of deal was negotiated during the initial making of the show. In the absence of a fixed percentage of royalties, actors will only earn the default SAG-specified residuals. While certainly not nothing, the latter is notoriously difficult to calculate.

In an interview with Backstage, entertainment lawyer and former child actor Jeff Cohen explained the math, "Residuals are based on formulas that take into account such things as the contract in place during the production, the time spent on the production, the production type, and the market where the product appears, whether it be television, video or DVD, pay television, or basic cable." You'll note that any reference to streaming is conspicuously absent from Cohen's quote. However, following a high-profile 2023 strike, residuals from streaming have been added in a memorandum to the SAG agreement.

Prior to the streaming memorandum, some fairly famous celebs report receiving ludicrously low royalty payments. For example, singer-cum actor Mandy Moore reported once getting a check for 81 cents, while Kimiko Glenn shared in July 2023 a stack of residual pay stubs on TikTok from her work on more than 40 episodes of "Orange is the New Black." The total? Just $27.30.