Baywatch Cast Reflect on Just How Little They Made from the Show

The show launched back in 1989, but was canceled at NBC after just one season. Shortly after, however, it was revived for the first-run syndication market the following year — and with that revival came new cast members and, apparently, a much smaller budget.

In ABC News Studios’ After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun docuseries, which dropped today on Hulu, both Erika Eleniak and Billy Warlock confirmed they had to take pay cuts after the first season — while Nicole Eggert claims they made $3,500 an episode. “I remember freaking out seeing my first paycheck after the taxes were taken out … how am I gonna live on this money?” exclaims Eleniak in the doc.

Warlock, meanwhile, jokes that “there’s not one rich actor on Baywatch,” adding that, in his mind, “everybody was disposable and if you didn’t fit Into their brand at the price they were paying you, you were gone.”

Alexandra Paul, David Chokachi and Erika Eleniak (above, left to right) spoke with TooFab about the doc, giving more insight into the money talks behind the scenes.

“I feel like the experience that you have on the show and working and that you have off the show with fans and people that appreciate you, it’s a world apart, you know? It’s such a completely different experience, one to the other,” Eleniak prefaced her thoughts, adding, “I remember the pay was not good. It was low, low, low pay.”

“I can see everything in such a different way now. I have such a different perspective of the whole thing and such a deeper appreciation for it, really since this documentary. To kind of look at everything that everyone’s been through and know too that you were not alone going through the things that you were going through,” she said, now knowing she wasn’t the only one struggling when it came to pay.

“I never got paid less than when I was on Baywatch, but I knew that when I went on,” added Paul. “The riches that came from it are so much more than the actual money. I don’t feel like I should have gotten a piece of the pie.”

“I was an actor, I signed a contract, and I get residuals and I’m grateful for them,” she added, before revealing something that was not in the documentary and which she only learned recently after listening to Eggert’s podcast.

“When I first went on the show … and Erica, you could probably relate to this because you felt a little bit taken advantage of financially … but I signed on and, as I said, it was the least amount of money that I’d ever gotten even up to then and after,” she shared.

“But I was okay, because I knew that there were different reasons why I was doing it and the show, but one of the things I was told was that it was favored nations, which means everybody who was coming on the show that year, which was me, Nicole, [Pamela Anderson], and [David Charvet], were gonna get the same amount of money each week.”

That, apparently, wasn’t the case.

“So I’m listening to Nicole’s podcast and she says, ‘Oh yeah, I got more. They told me on the sly not to tell anybody.’ And I have to say that that was a real wound to me. I felt very wounded when I heard that … I felt really betrayed and wounded, frankly,” said Paul, who, for years, had been saying in interviews that they were all paid the same.

While a painful realization, Paul added that she can’t complain about it too much because she’s also done movies where she was paid a flat fee, as well as an extra fee for “publicity I never did.”

“So I have participated in that too, later … I guess this happens, but the fact I was so Pollyanna about it,” she added with a laugh.

For Chokachi, landing the role of Cody Madison was his first big Hollywood role and he was just excited to get a job. He told TooFab his first offer was for a 5-year deal, but he was only guaranteed to appear in — and thus get paid for — about seven of the 20+ episodes of the first season. “It was kind of like a probation,” he said.

“Luckily, I was made for that show. I had an acting coach I worked with every night, and I went to the gym every night after shooting and then would just do it all over again,” he said, revealing how he found a way to get himself in more than just those seven guaranteed episodes.

“Obviously, it’s a very visual show and the more fit you are … if you stay in shape and you’re fit, you’re gonna have more fans, they’re gonna write more episodes for you, you’re going to actually be in more episodes,” he said. “So even if you’re not making what Pam and David are making per episode, if you get in more episodes every season, that’s better. I ended up doing 18 out of 22 my first year or something, so it was awesome.”

He did admit that there came a “point in time when you kind of go, ‘Okay, well this is my third year, I’ve kind of proven the character and proven myself, what about a raise?” — but, because a “very small step up each year” is already built into the contract, there’s not much to do about it.

“If you decide to go in there and try and renegotiate that increase, like Billy says, they’ll quickly point towards the door,” he added.

A ton of beautiful women and men ran slo-mo down the beaches across the show’s 11-season run, so, with all those bodies, did the stars ever fear being replaced or feel, as Warlock put it, “disposable”?

“We did the first season when it was NBC and then the first season of syndication and then I left after that,” said Eleniak. “I kind of feel like that second year for me, when we went into syndication and things were changing so rapidly from the way they were the first season, that’s when I started to kind of feel like, hmm.”

“You could kind of see what was going on. And a lot of new cast people were coming in, new cast members, and you could see the ideas changing, the swimsuits changing, everything kind of– so it certainly crossed my mind,” she admitted.

Paul, however, never had that fear. In fact, the only time she said she was told she’d be “let go” by producers was if she didn’t get her own publicist during the show’s fourth season.

“I already knew I was gonna be [leaving the show], so I didn’t get a publicist,” she claimed. “It was kinda like, you gotta do this!”

After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun is streaming now on Hulu.