At this point you’re probably aware that SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents more than 160,000 movie and television actors, began a strike at midnight that immediately brought Hollywood to a grinding halt. But hours before yesterday’s official announcement at a fiery press conference, actors were already joining picket lines in front of Netflix’s Hollywood offices with one resounding message: We’re here for the long haul.
In anticipation of the walkout, actors joined the Writers Guild of America (the union that represents writers and creative professionals in film, television, news, and new media industries) two months into their own work stoppage, tapping in to provide much-needed relief to fatigued strikers. Just before noon, however, the group abandoned their chants and signs and crowded around a wireless speaker to hear SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland signal the start of the actors strike. “If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble,” Drescher told the press and fellow union members. The crowd at Netflix erupted in excitement: “Pay your actors! Pay your writers!” they chanted.
“Striking together [with WGA] will put the kind of pressure on the studios we rarely get to exert.”
“I assumed we’d strike,” says The Game and Dynasty actress Carson Fagerbakke. “I’m glad we didn’t cave to a shitty deal…and I’m glad it’s happening now instead of in another few years. This is a great time to look at things.” That’s because, for the first time in more than 60 years, Hollywood’s two powerhouse unions, WGA and SAG-AFTRA, will be on strike at the same time, creating an opportunity for picketers to strengthen their bargaining power.
“We have already lost months of work because the lead-up to the writers strike drastically affected pilot season and the number of shows and movies going into production as far back as February,” says actress Abigail Marlowe, who’s been in shows like The Neighborhood and CSI. “Striking together [with WGA] will put the kind of pressure on the studios we rarely get to exert.”
The SAG-AFTRA announcement comes after failed negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) over things like the use of generative artificial intelligence, especially as it pertains to conjuring an actor’s likeness (to have a dead actor star in a new project, for example) or mimicking a writer’s style (through new tech like machine learning). But for those standing on Sunset Boulevard in 90-degree heat waiting for Drescher’s official battlecry, the most important issue was residuals.
Historically, working actors were able to make a living through the (often tiny) payments they received every time a show or movie they worked on aired on TV or sold a DVD. It’s common knowledge around Hollywood that the stars of shows like Seinfeld and Friends made their millions through reruns, not primetime views. Yet actors on streaming shows like Orange Is the New Black weren’t offered anything close. “These guys want to pay once and then profit off it throughout eternity,” says picketing actor and comedian James Tripp of Netflix, Disney, Amazon, and other studios’ altered residuals structure.
The fight over residual payments was enough to bring many first-timers to the picket line early on Thursday. “[The streamers are] telling us they don’t have the [viewership] numbers. Clearly they see how many times people watch something and how long they watch, but they can’t calculate how much to pay us for residuals? It’s absolute bullshit,” says actor Jon D’Acunto, whose last gig was dubbing a Turkish-language show called Alba for Netflix.
Picketers who have weathered previous SAG strikes say this battle mirrors those fought in the DVD and cable TV heydays: “Every time there is a new medium, the producers have used it to cut back our pay,” Tripp adds.
“If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble.”
Without these residual payments—even if meagre—being a professional actor becomes infinitely harder, especially given other changes within the industry, such as smaller episode orders from streamers (traditional TV shows often made 30 episodes or more per season, while streamers normally order under 10) and more limited distribution (once a streamer sunsets a show or movie, it’s probably gone forever). These things have had a monumental impact. “The middle class of acting has been completely hollowed out,” says picketing actress Renée Threatte, who has appeared in shows like Shameless and Black-ish and been a member of SAG-AFTRA for more than a decade. “It’s disappointing that a reasonable resolution can’t be agreed upon. I know there were a lot of people on the negotiation committee just looking for a fair contract,” she adds. So for now, she strikes: “I am prepared for the long haul.”
But it’s more than money that’s fuelling the fire. One recent article from Deadline came up again and again as the picketers walked back and forth on the hot concrete Thursday. In it, an unidentified studio executive is quoted as saying that “The endgame [of the WGA strike] is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” “[Studios] want to break the unions, and have people hold out until they are out of their homes,” Threatte says. “The gag is that most of us have been living at the edge of our budget for years, so what’s several months more at this point? For comments to come out wishing ill against us just for wanting to be able to make rent?”
Hopefully, a resolution is in sight, because Hollywood is more than just its actors and writers. “No one can work, so it’s really scary and really sad that the studios seem to be letting this happen without remorse or concern for peoples’ wellbeing,” says Fagerbakke. “As an actor, I am used to being out of work, I am used to taking odd jobs. I am more concerned for everyone else who is used to steadily working on sets that won’t be able to.”
This article was first published on Vogue.com.
