One of The Umbrella Academy‘s writers and producers Molly Nussbaum (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency) shared that before the Writers Guild of America Strike started, she was driving through Lyft in order to meet her financial needs in 2022. According to ComicBook, Molly Nassbaum was also working on Daredevil: Born Again for Disney+ pre-strike.
Nussbaum’s story is one of many filled with financial burden while working in the entertainment industry. Usually, many writers and lower paid actors helped pay the bills through residual payments they would receive from reruns of the television shows they worked on. In those times, the contracts would clearly state how the creatives would be paid based off of their work. However, nowadays with streaming, contracts and the specifics within them have become less clear. This mostly comes from streaming platforms not wanting to give any clear total of viewership numbers on shows.
Hence, this affects shows like Superman and Lois on The CW since they are unable to air reruns of the show from earlier seasons. This ultimately leads to the writers and actors on the project not receiving any pay for those reruns, if they had occurred. Nussbaum shared, “The money that you make on a job has to now last you six, 10, 12, 14 months — and when you don’t have residuals coming to help you get through that. I mean, I was an executive producer in April on a hit show for a streaming platform, and I was driving for Lyft in December. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not good.”
The Umbrella Academy is a hit Netflix show that stars Elliot Page (Juno), David Castañeda (We Die Young), Tom Hopper (Love In The Villa), Aidan Gallagher (Nicky, Ricky, Dicky and Dawn), Robert Sheehan (Misfits), Justin H. Min (Beef), Emmy Raver-Lampman (Blacklight), Ritu Arya (Barbie), and Colm Feore (Bon Cop, Bad Cop).