It’s a pretty well-known Friends trivia fact that the six main stars were each pulling in $1 million per episode by the end of the sitcom’s decade-long run on NBC. Royalties continue to roll in for Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and the estate of Matthew Perry, and it’s unlikely they’ve had to worry about their bank accounts for a very, very long time. Thirty years ago, however, the same couldn’t be said, as Cox recalled being nearly broke when she got that fateful audition to play Monica Gellar.
Courteney Cox got her big break on Friends in 1994, playing the super-clean tenant of the purple apartment that so many characters lived in. Her success has since continued on other projects, including the Scream franchise, but looking back, she recalled what a game-changer Friends was, telling CBS News:
That show, thank God for that show! That was at that tail end of when I’m really running out of money. I got an audition. I went in and I read the pilot and I said, ‘This is great.’ But you didn’t know how special it was. But then when you put this cast together and our incredible writers, it was lightning in a bottle.
It’s unlikely that any of the six actors could have imagined Friends being so successful so quickly — not to mention maintaining that success for decades after the show ended. At the time they were likely just happy to be able to pay the bills for a little longer.
It seems the show is still paying the bills, in a way, and Courteney Cox does not take for granted how fortunate she is, not just to have the lifestyle Friends has afforded her, but to have gone through that experience with people who she still considers more than just former colleagues. She said:
I’m just grateful that I had that opportunity to work with such wonderful people, and to live the life that I have now. That was my family. I mean, we went through everything. Those ten years were everything – they’re my family.
Courteney Cox may have been running out of money when the part of Monica came into her life, but according to Sex and the City star Kristin Davis, she had a pretty good feeling that Friends was going to change her luck. Davis has said that back in the day she and Cox were in the same yoga class, and after Cox did the Friends pilot, she was so confident it was going to be a hit that she went out and bought a Porsche.
It wasn’t just the Cougar Town actress who was struggling back in 1994, either. Matt LeBlanc famously was down to just $11 when he and his five would-be co-stars took their fabled trip to Las Vegas for one last hoorah of anonymity ahead of Friends’ premiere.
Things definitely worked out in the financial department for the Friends cast, and it really is crazy to think about how much that one script changed their lives so drastically. Lucky for us, we can continue to enjoy the results of their good fortune by streaming all 10 seasons and the reunion special with a Max subscription.