The Stars of ‘MADtv’ Argue About Who Made the Least Amount of Money
Working on television these days doesn’t guarantee the riches you think it does, Bobby Lee said recently on his Tigerbelly podcast, hosting a reunion of some of his MADtv co-stars. “I know dudes in my life that are series regulars on a couple of shows, no one knows their name,” he said. “They don’t make any money. They make less than what we made on MAD, which was the lowest that you can make.”
What did Lee make, wondered old cohort, Mo Collins.
“In the beginning? $4,000 an episode,” Lee answered.
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“What did you end up at?” Collins countered. “I’m genuinely curious.”
Lee refused to give an amount until Collins answered the same question. “Fifteen (thousand),” she said. “What did you end up at?”
“Twenty,” Lee confessed.
“Fuck my life,” Collins responded.
Debra Wilson and Aries Spears also revealed that they topped out at $15,000, making Lee the focal point of their ire. “Me and Michael (McDonald) got 20,” Lee said, drawing the line between the MADtv haves and have-nots.
If that doesn’t sound like a lot of money, know that MADtv counterparts over at Saturday Night Live might have been making less. Good Housekeeping connected some dots, concluding that first-year cast members made only three grand per episode (or about $60K a year). By their estimates, SNL comics don’t reach Lee’s $15,000 per episode number until their fifth season. (Lee said he only made that much in his seventh and eighth seasons after several cast mainstays had left.)
The MADtv stars confessed that their careers haven’t earned them the money or fame they might have expected when they were young TV stars. “There’s a certain level of acceptance after fucking decades, you know?” explained Collins. “You have to just go, this is my journey. This is what my journey is going to be, not what I thought it was going to be.”
Wilson, who’s worked steadily as a voice actor since her MADtv days, says money isn’t everything. “I live in a one-bedroom apartment,” she said. “And I’m happier than a motherfucker with a mansion.”
“I want to be the motherfucker with the mansion,” proclaimed Spears, not nearly as accepting of how his career played out. “It’s just always been my dream since a kid that I want be that dude. I want to be as big as Kevin Hart.” While Spears believes he has Hart’s talent and ability, his pockets tell a different story.
Wilson warned Spears that megasuccess doesn’t guarantee happiness. If comparing paychecks is the equation, “you’ll never be satisfied,” she said. “I’m gonna be real. Because some other motherfucker will come along that’ll blow the world up, and you’ll wanna be that. And there’s some other motherfucker will come around, as talented as you or possibly more. And then you’re gonna get upset because you focus on everything that is not you and everything you want, but not what is in your present space.”
Even though the MADtv stars weren’t satisfied with the money they made on the show, they agree that acting jobs pay even less now.
“I haven’t seen that much money since,” Collins lamented.
