A former Nickelodeon star is sparking a surprisingly heated debate after opening up about how much he earned during the height of his teen sitcom fame. While some fans were shocked to learn that years on one of the network’s biggest shows didn’t result in “never work again” money for Josh Peck. Meanwhile, others argued that the salary was still far more than most people earn in the same period of time.
Child Star Salary
Peck recently appeared on Haley Sacks’ podcast, “Financial Tea with Mrs. Down Jones.” During their conversation, he talked about how much he made while working as a TV star for Nickelodeon. Peck revealed he made about $125,000 per year as a star on the tween comedy “Drake & Josh.”
He first started talking about his financial past, stating, “I came from a lot of financial insecurity growing up. I had a single mom, as an only child, and we sort of vacillated between being lower-middle-class and being broke. But she worked in sales, so sometimes we had a great year, and I was getting like a new pair of Jordans, and sometimes I was like calling my grandma to help us pay for dinner because we had like $0.”
The former Nickelodeon child star continued, “And when I started working, on ‘Drake & Josh’ specifically, and I’ve talked about this, because when I was writing my book, I wasn’t very transparent with it, the financials in my book…We started out making $3,000 an episode on ‘The Amanda Show,’ and then by the time we finished ‘Drake & Josh,’ so that was like 60 episodes total for the whole show, the average rate per episode was about $15,000.”
Breaking It Down
So, Peck said he made about $15,000 per episode towards the end of their run on “Drake & Josh.” He added, “So over four years we ended up making about $900,000. But I think we probably between agent, manager, and taxes, we cleared half of that.”
Peck said, “Really, we were making about $125,000 a year. While that might seem high for a teenager, he did state, “People always will say, compared to so many other tougher jobs, like who are you to say anything.”
He added, “and I go, ‘I’m not.’ People always assume that it’s so much more, and why would you ever have to work again? But of course, if you made the salary of a dentist or something like that, you couldn’t just stop working after four years.”
Fans React to His Salary
Yes, Peck is correct. People do have a lot to say, and they say those things on social media.
In a thread on Reddit, one person wrote, “Way better than I get in four years of busting my hump daily in a warehouse,” and another added with a lot of sarcasm behind it, “Oh nooo he was a kid making 200k a year. Sounds terrible.”
Peck had his defenders too, with one fan writing, “The point is that they didn’t make life-changing ‘set for life, money after four years” and another added, “The point stands. You can’t retire on that. Not even close.”
