According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, better known as SAG-AFTRA members, will be joining the Writers Guild of America (WGA) on the picket lines starting today, Friday, July 14. While the strike is active, actors and performers will be completely barred from conducting any acting services. Performers will be barred from festivals, premieres, conventions, junkets, interviews, FYC events, publicity, and even social media, when it comes to promoting a studio-affiliated film or television show. The SAG-AFTRA news conference, led by former star of The Nanny and president of SAG-AFTRA, Fran Drescher (Saturday Night Fever, Happily Divorced), announced the strike and caused strikers and onlookers alike to claim that they are “so proud of her.”
When the guild formally announced plans to strike following contract negotiations with streamers and studios, Liz Alper (Chicago Fire, The Rookie), WGA board member, explained that the WGA donned Drescher as “the. Fucking. Nanny.” in regards to her comments, via The Hollywood Reporter. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director of SAG-AFTRA, eventually joined Drescher at the podium and stated that the national board “unanimously voted to issue a strike order.”
Around 160,000 members of the performers union will join the 11,000+ members of the WGA on the picket lines. Check out the official strike bulletin, received through Deadline, here. The joining of SAG-AFTRA marks the first dual strike in Hollywood in over six decades!
The strike followed talks of contracts between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). AMPTP represents the studios and streamers, and, in turn, is seen as a sort of villain to SAG-AFTRA and the WGA.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, an unnamed showrunner says that “they’ve recognized, as writers have, that the studios have broken the business and are calling the studios to account. We don’t point out how much money these CEOs make to shame them – though they should be ashamed. We point it out to demonstrate that these companies clearly have money. They just don’t want to give it to writers or actors.” This is part of what the WGA has been standing up for all along, and now writers have the actors on their side too.
Drescher had some powerful words in regard to the AMPTP. According to The Hollywood Reporter, she stated that they “wasted” days away when negotiating deal. She says “They stayed locked behind closed doors and canceled our meetings with them.” It seems as though they felt threatened. This new development in the strike is also likely to affect the upcoming Emmy Awards. The strike calls to immediately halt any and all campaigning and could even delay the ceremony, which is currently set to take place in September of this year.
Another unnamed showrunner brought up some issues, via The Hollywood Reporter, the guilds have been facing for far too long, saying that, “the system has been too unfair to too many for too long, and I think it needs to be remade more fair for everyone.” Even a former member of the WGA’s negotiating committee, David Slack (Law & Order, Lie to Me), stood up while on the record saying, “Dude demands $45 million a year plus a golden parachute in case he fucks it all up – and we’re the ones being unrealistic? If studios making $30 billion in profit every year are really struggling, take a pay cut, Bob.” His comments were in reference to Disney CEO Bob Iger stating the demands from the writers were “unrealistic.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the co-creator of How I Met Your Mother Craig Thomas (Source Code, Her Only Child), brought up an interesting point: “lest any rich, conservative AMPTP corporate types think us wacky, liberal artist types are being unreasonable, the president of SAG during the previous actors’ strike was … (checks notes) Ronald Reagan!”
Writer Caroline Renard (Secerts of Sulphur Springs, Bossy Bear) expands on the inconvenience of the strike saying that it’s “meant to be disruptive and inconvenient. We’re not playing patty cake on the playground. No Venice, no TIFF, no press tours, no red carpets, no shows, filming, etc for the foreseeable future. If the studios think they can do this without writers and actors, then let them,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.