A former Nickelodeon child star has revealed her shockingly low salary on the hit show
We call Josh Peck a true inventor.
The former Nickelodeon star admitted that she only made about $900,000 after working on the hit sitcom “Drake & Josh” for four years.
Peck shared on Thursday’s episode of the “Financial Tea with Mrs. Dow Jones” podcast that she started out making $3,000 per episode on “The Amanda Show” from 2000 to 2002 before landing her gig on “Drake & Josh” alongside Drake Bell, Miranda Cosgrove, Nancy Gold Sullivan and Jonathan Sullivan 2.
“When we finished ‘Drake & Josh’ – so that was a total of 60 episodes for the whole show – the average, the average estimate per episode was about $15,000. So over the course of four years, we ended up doing about 900 majors,” he explained.
In 2006, Peck and Bell, 39, starred in “Drake & Josh Go Hollywood,” before the hit Nickelodeon series wrapped in 2007.
Peck emphasized that the actors “worked very hard,” but did not see all of the money they received.
“Maybe, between the agent, manager and taxes, we got rid of half of that,” he recalled.
Looking back, Peck knows he made good money.
“We were making about $125,000 a year. And people always say, ‘Well, compared to a lot of other hard jobs, like who are you to say nothing?’ And I go, ‘I’m not,’” he clarified.
However, the money was nowhere near what fans thought.
“The only reason I say that is because people always think it’s too much and why don’t you work again?” But, if you’re getting a dentist’s salary or something like that, you wouldn’t just stop working after four years.”
The student of “Grandfather” also felt the pressure after being the breadwinner of his family, noting that when it is “fixed on you” to never return to the brokenness, you continue “as long as possible.”
“And I saw that in me forever,” Peck recalls, “a deep financial insecurity that fueled everything I did.”
In 2022, Peck revealed that while on the show he and his mother had “a BMW five-series car” while living in a two-bedroom serviced apartment.
“We were living a very middle-class life,” he revealed on the “Trade Secrets” podcast at the time.
He added that “there is no residue on children’s television.”
Bell echoes the sentiments of his colleagues in 2025, criticizing the idea that all children win.
“That’s the worldview, it’s always been like this,” he said while on “The Unplanned Podcast” at the time. “It’s like, you know, ‘Oh, you did a commercial for Folgers Coffee. You should live in a mansion in Hollywood. Like, I saw you on TV. You’re rich.’
“It’s far from a crime,” Bell said. “And in particular, which worries a lot of us at Nickelodeon, we don’t get residuals from our shows.”
