If you’re not familiar with Cameo.com, you must visit. The site is filled with mostly C and D celebs, with a serious sprinkling of A and B listers (Richard Dreyfus, come on. What are you doing?) who will record personal video message for a fee. Some of those fees as low as $50, some as high as $2500.
Recently the CEO of Cameo was talking to The New York Times and made the claim that Larry Thomas, best know to Seinfeld fans as “the Soup Nazi,” was making six figures selling messages on the site.
Naturally, this type of information is pretty personal and certainly not something the head of a company trying to lure in new celebs should be revealing.
“For anybody to divulge somebody’s income is irresponsible because everyone’s got expenses and nobody knows what they are,” Thomas, 64, pointing out that six figures can mean anything from $100,000 to close to $1 million.
“I’ve never seen a million dollars in my life or anything like it,” he continued.
The actor, known for his iconic episode of the sitcom, said that Galanis called him personally to apologize after revealing the information on NYT’s “Sway” podcast earlier this month.
Over the past few weeks, Thomas says that he has been deluged with requests for money and while he is incredibly grateful to be able to have a payday during the COVID-19 pandemic, he works hard for the Cameo cash.
“Between technical glitches and me wanting it to be perfect … I may do four takes of each Cameo so it’s not 30 seconds of work and then you have to proof them,” he explained.
Thomas, who quit his day job eight years after the “Seinfeld” episode ran in 1995, is appreciative for his spot in pop culture history.
“It’s an insane phenomenon,” he told us. “I can’t even express how grateful I am as an actor where my 18 years in the business had been at that time and where I see a lot of other actors my age at this time.”