David Schwimmer's efforts to ensure his co-stars were paid as much as him are being remembered in the wake of his Friends castmate Matthew Perry's death.
Perry revealed the kind act in his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, which was released last year.
Schwimmer, who played Ross, and Jennifer Aniston, who played his on-screen love interest Rachel, were seen by the show's makers as the more popular cast members and were earning more than the others by season two.
Perry wrote that Schwimmer approached his castmates and suggested they should negotiate their salaries as a group rather than individually.
"David had certainly been in a position to go for the most money, and he didn't," Perry wrote.
"I would like to think that I would have made the same move, but as a greedy 25-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."
The actors had reportedly been paid US$22,500 per episode in season one, but that ballooned to $1 million an episode for season eight in 2001. By season 10, they were making $1,100,040 an episode and doing fewer episodes.
"We had David's goodness, and his astute business sense, to thank for what we had been offered. I owe you about $30m, David," Perry wrote
According to the Guardian, the collective negotiation strategy has been copied by actors on shows such as The Big Bang Theory and This Is Us. Guardian writer Ann Lee said the act of solidarity was probably a key factor in the cast staying together for so long, as other shows often see core cast members leave over salary disputes.
"It would've destroyed us, I think, if someone was soaring financially," Aniston told WSJ Magazine earlier this year.
Perry was laid to rest on Friday (local time) at a Los Angeles cemetery in a service attended by relatives and Friends castmates.
The cause and manner of Perry's death are still to be determined.
Newshub.
