Matthew Perry's Friends Salary Was Likely Much Bigger Than You Think

The cast of "Friends" definitely received solid salaries by the end of the series — but you might be surprised to learn just how much exactly Matthew Perry earned from the iconic sitcom.

In 2022, Perry released a memoir titled "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing," which detailed his rise to fame on the NBC series as well as his substance abuse issues throughout the show's run. The cast of "Friends" made major headlines when they made sure that they made significantly more money as the show progressed, and according to Perry's memoir, they all worked together to make sure they got paid fairly.

Before committing to "Friends," Perry was set to star in the pilot of "LAX 2194," but was paid for that single episode and moved on to play Chandler Bing. As for his "Friends" salary, he got ... a little help from his on-screen "friend" David Schwimmer.

"David had certainly been in a position to go for the most money, and he didn't," Perry wrote in his memoir (per Variety). "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. 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. 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.)"

News broke on October 28 that Matthew Perry was found unresponsive at his home in Los Angeles in a hot tub and pronounced dead. The actor made no secret of his struggles with drugs and alcohol — which he detailed in "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing" — but according to TMZ, no drugs were found on the property when paramedics arrived. The outlet also reported that no foul play was involved and that paramedics were called for an apparent cardiac event.

Beyond "Friends," Perry was known for projects like "Fools Rush In," "The Whole Nine Yards," that film's sequel "The Whole Ten Yards," and the body-swap comedy "17 Again." Above all else, though, Perry's crowning achievement was his series-long role as Chandler Bing on "Friends," delivering the series' most acerbic and sarcastic lines while also selling one of its central romances (namely, the one between Chandler and Courteney Cox's Monica Geller).

At the time of his passing, Matthew Perry was 54 years old.