Former Disney Channel star Ryan McCartan is sharing a glimpse of the low residuals that he receives from the network.
McCartan, 31, took to his Instagram Story on Monday, May 26, and revealed that he was expecting just 41 cents in payment for his work on the former series Liv and Maddie, which aired from 2013 to 2017. The actor played the recurring role of Diggie Smalls throughout the show’s four-year run.
“When they ask me if Disney Channel paid well,” McCartan joked via social media, posting a screenshot of the payment notice.
After Liv and Maddie ended, he went on to make his Broadway debut as Fiyero in Wicked and star in other musicals including South Pacific, Frozen and West Side Story. Since January, he’s starred in The Great Gatsby in New York City’s theater district.
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“Gatsby is so adult,” he said of playing Jay Gatsby in a recent interview with PIX 11 News. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m not a grownup. I’m a kid from Minnesota. So they’re gonna go for someone sophisticated and complicated — not me. Then I get the call and I’m like, ‘This is a mistake. This is a mistake. Me?’”
Like many other working actors, McCartan earns residual paychecks anytime that a TV show he appeared on airs in reruns. The money has helped people pay their rent in between gigs.
“Ours is a fickle industry and in my 20+ years of being a performer, my career has ebbed and flowed,” Mandy Moore wrote via Instagram in summer 2023, when the SAG-AFTRA acting union began its four-month strike over a labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
The star of This Is Us added at the time: “I’ve had very lean years where I couldn’t get a job and those are precisely the moments when in years past, actors could rely on residuals from their past work to help them get by.”
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Glen Powell has tweeted that he used to survive on residuals “for years” when he was still attempting to “make it as a working actor.”
As streaming platforms lure viewers away from traditional TV, actors’ residual check amounts have significantly decreased. One bone of contention during the SAG-AFTRA strike was producers’ refusal to compromise on better terms regarding residual checks during contract negotiations.
McCartan’s fellow Disney Channel alum, Robert Carradine, has also received low residuals. Carradine, 71, played Hilary Duff’s dad on the popular series Lizzie McGuire and once earned a residual check in August 2019 for $0.
Davida Williams, who played cheerleader Claire Miller on Lizzie McGuire, revealed in March 2023 that she usually gets a sum of $3.50 or less, and Jake Thomas (Lizzie’s little brother Matt), recently mused: “It used to be, like, you’d have to take this huge stack of checks every month for residuals over to the bank and deposit them. But the huge stack would be like, ‘Oh, this is a massive stack. This is $8.’”
