Christine Taylor was already working on television while her friends were finishing high school. On Hey Dude, she played Melody, the lifeguard at Nickelodeon’s Bar None Dude Ranch, for five seasons. Ask the cast what they earned, though, and the memories don’t quite match.
Some of her former costars remember getting $5,000 an episode by the final season. “We were making $3,500 an episode, I’m pretty sure,” Taylor told Natanya Ross on We’re Still Here, Babe.
She remembered the raises: $500 per episode each season, with everyone receiving the same pay. The show produced 65 episodes between 1989 and 1991.
Taylor saved enough of those earnings to help support herself when she moved to Los Angeles. Her family helped, too. She was getting guest spots and going out for auditions, still several years away from playing Marcia Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie.
Taylor and Ross Compared Their Early Television Paychecks
Ross, who appeared on The Secret World of Alex Mack, brought up television guest appearances and tried to remember what those paid. Taylor’s recollection was about $1,500 for a lead guest role.
Ross suggested that an actor with an established rate might have negotiated $5,000 for a week’s work. “Maybe for something special,” Taylor replied. She didn’t think she’d made that much herself.
She didn’t earn $5,000 on an acting job until “many, many years” after Hey Dude, she said, according to Entertainment Weekly.
She Was Still in High School When ‘Hey Dude’ Called
Taylor grew up near Allentown, Pennsylvania, where a local production of Godspell in a gym got her interested in theater. She began taking Saturday workshops and performing in community productions. A local talent manager saw her in high school and asked whether she would try auditioning for commercials in New York.
Her mother drove her to a Burger King audition, where she read from a poster board in a tiny room. Taylor got the job. Commercials continued through her junior year, and the Hey Dude audition came along when she was a senior.
She went to Tucson to make the pilot, and Nickelodeon picked up the series by the spring of her senior year. Taylor had done theater, but television was unfamiliar. She remembered learning as she went, alongside other young actors who were doing much the same thing.
She Had a Roommate in Los Angeles and a Six-Month Plan
Through a Hey Dude director, Taylor had met Martha, an actress living in Los Angeles who needed a roommate. Taylor had already visited the city and was thinking of moving there. “I’m gonna go out and try it for six months,” she remembered deciding. She arrived in January, figuring she could go back East and start college if she hadn’t found work by summer.
Jobs came slowly. A guest appearance on Saved by the Bell or Blossom was enough to keep her encouraged, she told Ross, while her savings paid expenses between bookings. Her father and other family members were still helping. Taylor remembered having to watch her spending and make trips to the laundromat as she tried to get settled.
Having Hey Dude on her résumé did not always help her explain who she was. Taylor said many casting directors hadn’t heard of it. She kept auditioning and added movie parts in Calendar Girl and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. The six-month stay eventually became about 20 years.
Taylor Had Already Played Marcia Before the Movie Audition
By the time Paramount was casting The Brady Bunch Movie, Taylor had spent a month playing Marcia in the stage parody The Real Live Brady Bunch. She still had to audition for the film, progressing through casting and producer meetings before being paired with prospective Jans and Cindys. The 1995 comedy became the break she had been waiting for.
She also heard from Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz, who left a message on her answering machine and met with her about the movie. “I wish that I saved that tape,” she said. Taylor described Marcia as the part she was “destined to play” and returned for A Very Brady Sequel in 1996.
Work followed in The Wedding Singer, Zoolander and Dodgeball, but Taylor also remembered a change in the audition process after Marcia. She could sometimes meet a director or producer without first going through the casting office. She still auditioned for Seinfeld; Friends offered her the role of Bonnie.