The Surprising Size Of 'Law & Order' Stars' Residual Paychecks

The actors celebrate the series' 25th anniversary on HuffPost Live.

It's been 25 years since "Law & Order" first premiered on NBC in 1990, and HuffPost Live celebrated the milestone on Monday by reuniting four of the actors who helped make the show a hit for a quarter century.

In the video above, host Cailtyn Becker chats with Jill Hennessy (Assistant DA Claire Kincaid), S. Epatha Merkerson (Lt. Anita Van Vuren), Carolyn McCormick (Dr. Elizabeth Olivet) and Dann Florek (Capt. Donald Cragen) about their expectations for the series at its beginning and how things have changed now that the show is syndicated everywhere. With all those ubiquitous reruns, you might assume the actors are getting a stack of healthy residual checks each month, but you'd be wrong. In fact, according to Merkerson, sometimes the price of the postage to send the check is more than what's actually inside the envelope.

Watch the stars of "Law & Order" discuss their residual pay in the video above, and catch their full HuffPost Live reunion here.

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