Celebrity News

‘Jersey Shore’ stars want big bucks

The “Jersey Shore” cast is bidding to bump its salaries up to a fist-pumping $10,000-an-episode following the wild success of their MTV show.

The cast — including Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, “Pauly D” Delvecchio, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino and Jenni “J-Woww” Farley — earned only a few hundred dollars each per episode for the first season, and now want a huge raise for the next one.

A source close to the crew told us, “They want $10,000 an episode, arguing that the stars from ‘The Hills’ get $100,000 per episode and that show doesn’t even rate as high. They’re hanging together like the cast of ‘Friends’ and saying if they don’t all get the pay increase, none of them will return.”

Thursday’s finale was watched by 4.8 million viewers, three times the audience of the season opener. Now cast members believe they’re worth up to $100,000 each to film the second season this summer. The negotiations are being led by shrewd operator Larry Rudolph, who is managing Pauly D.

But Snooki says that if the talks fail, she plans to find herself a rich man. She told The Post’s Kirsten Fleming: “If I am not tied up with work, I will get my own beach house in Belmar and live it up. There’s mad-hot rich guys there.”

On the party circuit, the “Jersey Shore” stars are in great demand, earning up to $10,000 a night for personal appearances. They’ll miss Pauly D’s deejay gig at Sutton Place tonight because they’ve been invited to Sean “Diddy” Combs’ “Sweet Sixteen” party for his son, Justin. And sources said Snooki has been invited to the Grammys by Ellen DeGeneres.

Snooki said she was hiring a bodyguard to keep fans at bay. The 22-year-old “Princess of Poughkeepsie” explained, “When we try to go to TGI Friday’s or Applebee’s, we can’t eat because people go crazy.”

A rep for MTV refused to comment on the negotiations and added, “We have not yet confirmed a season two.”

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