Lucille Ball
With her husband Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball took the world by storm in I Love Lucy. It basically invented the sitcom as we know it! Aside from that, the TV show also started the trend of reruns and residual checks. The two lead stars have since died, but their estate continues to rake in money from the legendary show. This means that they continued to receive residual payments for more than thirty years, not the network. We do not think that this is the case anymore, however. After all, Desilu was purchased by CBS in 2018. Aside from I Love Lucy, this also meant handing the network the rights to Star Trek too. We are sure that the estate made a lot of money from the sale.
Lucille Ball
Nancy Cartwright
There is a chance that you already know which show holds the title of the longest-running animated comedy show. This honor goes to none other than The Simpsons! It has been running for 32 seasons and counting. We all know Bart Simpson, but did you know that Nancy Cartwright voices him? With the rest of the stars, she makes as much as $20 million a year from the show’s reruns. When it comes to new episodes, she earns $400,000 an episode. It is neat to hear that the voice actress has held this position the whole time. She has been bringing Bart to life since the show began in the ‘80s!
Nancy Cartwright