Josh Peck reveals how much money he made from starring in Drake & Josh. The Nickelodeon sitcom enjoyed a four-season run from 2004-07 and proved popular with younger audiences, becoming the top-rated live-action show among viewers aged 2-11. The series also spawned two TV movies: Drake & Josh Go To Hollywood in 2006; and Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh in 2008.
Drake & Josh centered on two very different boys, Drake Parker (Drake Bell) and Josh Nichols (Peck), who are forced to learn how to live together as stepbrothers following the marriage of Drake’s mom and Josh’s Dad. While they start out at odds, the two soon find common ground, and they use their complimentary skillsets to get them out of a wide range of ridiculous scenarios. The show featured a number of actors who would go on to become familiar TV presences, including Miranda Cosgrove (iCarly) as Drake’s conniving sister Megan, Yvette Nicole Brown (Community) as Josh’s boss Helen, and Allison Scagliotti (Warehouse 13) as Josh’s rival-turned-girlfriend.
Now, in an interview with the Trading Secrets podcast (via ET Canada), Peck reveals that he didn’t make as much money from Drake & Josh as viewers might expect. While the actor admits that many who star in successful sitcoms end up set for life, he says they earned $15,000 an episode during their 56-episode run, which was then subtracted by expenses. This is no small amount of money, Peck acknowledges, but not something he and his family could live off forever. Check out his full comments below:
I can only speak to my experience. But I think it’s quite public that if you were on a show like Two and a Half Men or Modern Family, and you were the kid on a massive network, syndicated show… The case could be made that you’d have enough money to last you for the rest of your life. But, the reality is that when we were making the show, we did 60 episodes and we made about $15,000 an episode. So, when all is said and done, we were sort of left after agents and managers and taxes. […] You live with about $450,000 over five years, which breaks down to a little less than $100,000 a year — now, certainly a great amount of money, but not enough to set you up for life. And a lot of it, we lived on, and I’m not gonna brag: My mom and I had a used BMW five series. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment with amenities… We lived a very middle-class life.
While $15,000 an episode is exceptional money to be making while still a teenager, Peck is right that it pales in comparison to what the most successful TV stars have earned. For example, while the core Friends cast started out making $22,500 per episode for season 1, by seasons 9 & 10, they had renegotiated their salaries to $1 million an episode each. Jerry Seinfeld commanded a similar salary by the end of Seinfeld, but thanks to being one of the show’s co-creators with a sizeable share of the syndication revenue, his net worth is estimated at almost $1 billion today.
Drake & Josh clearly didn’t provide Peck with that kind of money, but he continues to work as an actor in both film and TV. He’s currently set to appear in iCarly season 2, reuniting him with Cosgrove, as well as Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated new movie, Oppenheimer. So, while he may not be able to live entirely on his Drake & Josh earnings, Peck has parlayed his early success into a stable career, which surely pleases fans of both him and the sitcom that made him famous.
Source: ET Canada