Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon will earn $2m per episode for their forthcoming Apple TV series, or at least $40m for the two seasons Apple have so far ordered.
The Morning Show, which reunites the former Friends sisters as rivals at a daytime talk show, will reportedly cost Apple more than $300m overall to produce, with a significant chunk of the budget going on star salaries.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Aniston and Witherspoon negotiated some of the highest salaries in television for their participation, which will likely be far higher as both are producers on the series and have stakes in the show’s ownership.
The pair are joined by a similarly starry supporting cast in the series, which includes Steve Carell, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
The Morning Show marks a significant bump in TV salary for Witherspoon, who reportedly earned $1m per episode for the second season of her previous TV series Big Little Lies.
Both she and co-star Nicole Kidman, who negotiated their salaries together, received enormous salary bumps from broadcaster HBO after earning a far lower $250,000 and $300,000 per episode for the show’s first season.
The Morning Show, which will run for two seasons consisting of 10 episodes each, debuts on the new Apple TV streaming service on 1 November.
Aniston yesterday joined Instagram. Her first picture, depicting a reunion between the entire Friends cast, caused the site to temporarily crash.
