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Jason Alexander says Seinfeld's cast demanded $1,000,000 per episode because continuing to play George, Elaine, and Kramer would hurt their careers “The million dollar figure actually first came out of Julia's mouth. It was not a wild I wish I got a million dollars. There had been actual research done. We knew that for the network alone, every episode of Seinfeld generated $14 million of profit. Sheer profit for the network alone, let alone Castle Rock and the syndication participants” “We had argued that after five years of being in Seinfeld, there was no upside in the long run for the three of us to continue doing the show. It had made us celebrities. It had made us some money. But if we were going to be actors with careers that extended where we needed to play different roles, continuing to put out the image of George, Elaine, and Kramer was actually detrimental to our long run careers. So why was there any incentive for us to be in this for the long run unless those shows were extremely profitable to us. We argued that we needed to be cut in on syndication. We needed syndication points. We were told, in no small terms, to go take a hike” “When we got into the bargaining chair and NBC so desperately wanted to have another season or another two seasons, we said again, syndication. Our salaries are fine, but you're making such massive profits in syndication, profits of $3 to $4 million per show into infinity, and you don't want to give us any of that. In order for us to feel good about doing this show, I want to leave the most successful half hour in the history of television knowing that I never have to work again. That is what I require, or you can't have my services” “Knowing what all the revenues were, what we would have made had they given us the syndication, what everybody was making upfront, we tried to figure out what percentage of the success formula of the show were the three of us. We came up with Jerry, Larry, the writers, us, and everything else. As one fifth of that, we said here's the number, $1 million an episode”