Production of Nailed It! Halloween, the Netflix celebrity home baking competition show hosted by Nicole Byer (Wipeout, Grand Crew), officially shut down production today due to an ongoing labor dispute with crew members. Deadline reports that crew members went on strike two days ago in order to secure a contract with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), an international labor union focusing on the entertainment industry.
Along with production shutting down, Netflix and the show’s primary production company, Magical Elves, have agreed to end the show and not film its final four episodes. The union, who have been picketing the production company, were informed of this Tuesday and were called in to collect their gear from the set.
“I know for sure that it’s shut down,” a union source told Deadline. “They’d rather shut down than sign a union contract. They’re notoriously nonunion.”
Representatives of Netflix or Magical Elves did not care to comment on the decision to end production, but it was noted that the deliberation to do so was a “back and forth” between the two.
This protest is not the first time Magical Elves has come face to face with a union dispute. In 2014, the production company faced a series of protests from the Boston Teamsters Local 25 over its refusal to hire their union drivers for that year’s season of Top Chef. Reuters reported that those protests were a series of physical, thuggish actions to extort the company’s higher-ups to hire their drivers. The host of Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi (Boom, Glitter), was even swarmed by teamsters as she was driving to set, and one allegedly said to her, “I’ll smash your pretty little face.”
“I could feel my heart beat in my chest, like when you’re scared as a child,” Lakshmi testified in 2017.
Leaders of Team 25 were indicted on extortion charges, but out of the five that were, only one pleaded guilty, and the rest were acquitted. Deadline says that these protests were nothing like those in 2014 and were nothing but peaceful showings.
The finished four, and only, episodes of Nailed It! Halloween will air on Netflix this fall, most likely around the holiday of its namesake.