Jennifer Hyatt Tedmori has opened up about how little money she still receives from her time on Ned’s Declassified Survival Guide.
While many people assume a successful TV show guarantees a steady stream of income for years, residuals can be far less impressive than expected.
Tedmori, who played Doris Trembly in Ned’s Declassified, recently shared a video showing a pile of unopened residual check envelopes she had been putting off going through.
“I’ve been procrastinating for months in opening this because it is a b*tch,” she said. “Some of these could be a penny, some of these could be five dollars.”
The first envelope revealed she was owed just two cents.
“Two cents? Just f**king keep it,” the actress fumed. “I don’t want it.”
Two more checks followed, this time for $0.63 and $0.03.
“Now I get it, it’s been a long time,” Tedmori went on. “I’m surprised that I’m getting anything – but three cents? It costs you 75 cents to send this envelope. The way it’s adding up… the math ain’t f**king mathing.”
She also came across a residual payment from her appearance on 90210, and that one was far more respectable at more than $20.
When she totaled the Ned’s Declassified checks, the amount came to only $8.63. Adding the 90210 payment brought the combined total to $30.06.
She then joked that the money might stretch to a Starbucks coffee.
Warning: video contains strong language
Residuals are the payments performers can receive when a TV show is reused after its original run, whether through reruns, cable, home video or newer streaming formats. Under SAG-AFTRA’s framework, those payments are calculated by formula and can be affected by the type of production, the market in which it airs and the contract that covered the work, which is why some checks can end up being only a few cents.
That reality has long been a sore point for many former child stars, especially those who worked in the cable era before streaming became the dominant way viewers revisit old shows. Recent SAG-AFTRA contract changes have improved residual terms for some newer streaming projects, but those updates do not change the economics of older series like Ned’s Declassified Survival Guide.
Tedmori is at least still getting some kind of residual income, which is not the case for every former Nickelodeon star.
Josh Peck, who appeared in all four seasons of Drake & Josh, has previously spoken about what he earned during the show’s run. He said his pay started at $3,000 per episode and eventually rose to $15,000.
“We started out making $3,000 an episode on The Amanda Show,”
Peck said on the Financial Tea with Mrs Dow Jones podcast.
“And then by the time we finished Drake & Josh – so that was 60 episodes total for the whole show – the median rate, the average rate per episode was about $15,000. So over four years, we wound up making about 900 grand.”
However, Peck said that none of that translated into residual checks later on.
“I would say, we made 60 episodes, and the median sort of price over the four seasons was $15,000 an episode. No residuals. No residuals in kids’ TV.”
He previously shared that comment while speaking with Jason Nash.