Is the striking-Friends story true?
Edited by Mary Bruno.
With Friends Like These...
NBC execs seem befuddled by Time magazine's recent report that the entire cast of its hit series Friends plans to leave the show unless they get a big, fat raise. (Time claims that all six cast members are conspiring to walk if their per-episode paychecks don't get bumped up to $100,000 for next season; when the show debuted in 1994, they were paid $22,500 per episode.) NBC's West Coast president, Don Ohlmeyer, says he first heard of the demand when he read the story in Time's July 22 issue, and apparently the folks at Warner Bros., which produces Friends, were in the dark too. According to Ohlmeyer, when John Agoglia, president of NBC Enterprises, called Warner Bros. to find out what the heck was going on, he "was told that Warner Bros. had not heard anything from anybody."
So, is the rumor true? Are the Friends prepared to strike for higher wages? And if they are, what position does NBC plan to take? Ohlmeyer isn't tipping his hand. "This is a story that will have its own life until we know [what exactly is going on]," he says. The way we see it, an agent for one of the Friends cagily floated the walkout idea to the press, and new salaries are being negotiated even as we type. We think the cast deserves them. After all, if NBC can sell the Friends syndication rights for $4 million per episode, surely it can reward the Friends cast with a hundred grand per.