Jason Earles, best known for playing Jackson on Hannah Montana, has opened up about his rough experience working with Disney.
The actor said that the pay seemed good at first, but the way his contract was set up meant he missed out on a lot of extra money from reruns and royalties.
While speaking on ‘Night School’ podcast, Jason shared: “This is the reality of the situation. They are really good-paying jobs. Before being on ‘Hannah’, I was an extra, a stand-in and a substitute teacher, and being on ‘Hannah’ paid significantly more than those jobs. That being said, when ‘Hannah’ was on, the contract was before SAG and AFTRA merged, so it was an AFTRA basic cable agreement.
“So, because of that, that is like the worst television contract that you can be under.
“One of the ways you make your money is through residuals. So if they air the episode a bunch of times, you make money on the back side.
“For ‘Hannah’, because it was that agreement, whatever they pay you above scale, they can credit back in your residuals.
“Let’s for easy numbers, say that scale as a series regular is $5,000 an episode. And then, because you’re whatever, you sign your deal and they pay you $10,000 an episode.
“So what happens is, they pay you $10,000, they air the episode, and the first $5,000 of residuals you should have gotten, they keep because they paid you upscale.
“The double whammy was, at the time, usually a reuse, is that they aired it once, and it counts as one.
“The after agreement said that if the episode was aired at noon, there was a full 24 hours to air as many times as they wanted, and it counted as one use. So I got f***.
“You’re getting double d***.”
However, even with the unfair deal, Jason shared that he’s thankful for what Hannah Montana did for his career. He knows he didn’t get the huge payday he feels he earned from such a massive show, but he’s doing alright and said he’s still better off than a lot of people.
