At the stroke of midnight, 160,000 television and movie actors in Hollywood will be going on strike, joining screenwriters who have been off work since May. It is the first time since 1960 that both actors and writers have banded together in a historic double strike.
Fran Drescher, an actress who heads the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), blasted movie studios saying that the “eyes of the world and, particularly, the eye of labor are upon us.”
“I am shocked by the way the people we have been in business with are treating us. I cannot believe it, quite frankly. How far apart we are on so many things; how they plead poverty; that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs.”
“It is disgusting,” Drescher added.
Meanwhile, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), a group representing major movie studios, has sought to shift the blame for the failed negotiations to SAG-AFTRA.
“A strike is certainly not the outcome we hoped for as studios cannot operate without the performers that bring our TV shows and films to life,” a spokesperson for the group, Scott Rowe, told the Washington Post in a statement. “The Union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry.”
Disney studio chief executive Bob Iger — who recently signed a lucrative extension until 2026 — called the union’s demands “not realistic” in a CNBC interview Thursday morning, hours before the strike was announced.
“It’s very disturbing to me . . . We’ve talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges that we’re facing and the recovery from covid, which is ongoing; it’s not completely back.”
The core dispute concerns compensation and residuals, a form of royalty payment entertainers receive derived from the popularity of a show. Growing concern over artificial intelligence (AI) and how studios may use a performer’s likeness without compensation is also at the top of the agenda.
“I think that’s become the intractable issue,” an entertainment lawyer told the New York Times. “It feels existential and people don’t understand it. It’s new. It’s scary. Everyone is worried that all of a sudden they will be in a sequel to a movie and they are not getting paid for their work.”
A-listers including Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, and Ben Stiller signed a letter in late June alongside 1,000 other actors maintaining they were “prepared to walk strike” if a compromise was not struck.
“It’s brutal for our sister unions,” Matt Damon told the Washington Post. “And it’s going to be tough for our actors, for 160,000 actors; nobody wants a work stoppage. But if our leadership is saying our deal isn’t fair, then we got to hold strong until we get a deal that’s fair for working actors.”
“A strike is an instrument of last resort,” SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, said during a press conference on Thursday afternoon announcing the strike. “Although we are disappointed with their reluctance to cooperate, the solidarity of the SAG-AFTRA members has never been stronger.”