We'd never thought that it'd be so simple, but—Josh Peck is talking paychecks.
The Drake & Josh alum, who starred alongside Drake Bell in the Nickelodeon show from 2004 to 2007, recently opened up about his annual salary as a child star and the financial misconceptions that came along with it.
"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," he said during the April 11 episode of Dear Media's Trading Secrets podcast. "The case could be made that you'd have enough money to last you for the rest of your life."
Sharing that he believes there's this "misnomer" about him that he was given a "golden parachute," he added, "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."
Josh continued, "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."
Adding that the money "went to their lifestyles when the show was over," Josh revealed that there's "no residuals on kids' television."
"It was like we had 18 months of runway, you know," he said. "It's as though someone had lost their job."
And this isn't the first time the 35-year-old actor has spoken out about his time on the beloved Nickelodeon show. In March, Josh revealed that he and his former co-star (who had a previous rift over Drake not being invited to Josh's wedding in 2017) were "not really" friends currently. As for Drake, in his own podcast episode just days later, the singer noted that he was "bugged" about Josh's assertion that their friendship was over.
E! News has reached out to Nickelodeon for comment.