Trick or treat but don’t cross the picket line. The union representing Hollywood actors recently issued its striking members with fashion advice for Halloween. “Choose costumes inspired by generalized characters and figures (ghost, zombie, spider, etc),” it said, anxious that they do not dress as film characters that might be seen as promoting the content of major studios.
The effective ban on dressing up as Barbie, Marvel superheroes and Wednesday Addams did not go down well. Actor Ryan Reynolds tweeted sarcastically: “I look forward to screaming ‘scab’ at my 8 year old all night. She’s not in the union but she needs to learn.” The union was forced to hastily clarify that the guidelines do not apply to children.
The episode was illustrative of how a summer of labour unrest has left almost no corner of Hollywood life untouched. After more than 100 days, the film and TV actors are engaged in the longest strike in their history. Expectations that it would be resolved quickly after writers ended a walkout of their own have been dashed.
An alphabet soup of competing interests are in play. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra), representing more than 150,000 actors, has been on strike since July while it negotiates a contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which includes major film studios (Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros), television networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and streaming services such as Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon.
The actors are seeking a wage increase, improved residual payments from streaming services and protections against the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Talks ended abruptly on 11 October when the studios walked away from the negotiating table, accusing the actors of unreasonable demands.
The actors’ guild and the studios are set to resume negotiations on Tuesday with several studio executives expected to join and growing pressure for a resolution. Production of films and TV shows is sidelined indefinitely and already starting to affect the upcoming awards season. It is also taking its toll on actors who are working other jobs to make ends meet.
“There’s a lot of financial hardship and there’s emotional hardship,” said Mary Flynn, a Sag-Aftra strike captain for the Netflix picket line who is finding alternative work at medical schools, where she simulates patient-doctor interactions for students, and as a tour guide in Los Angeles. “We want to be back to work. We just need the AMPTP to do the right thing. The fight is there but boy, we’re tired.”
The strike began on 14 July at what should have been a celebratory moment for the industry as nominations for the Emmy awards had just been announced, honouring the likes of Succession, The Last of Us and The White Lotus. The films Barbie and Oppenheimer – dubbed “Barbenheimer” – were riding to the rescue of the box office.
But a fiery speech from the actors’ guild president, Fran Drescher, drew a line in the sand: no business as usual. Actors joined writers on the picket lines for the first dual strike in more than 60 years. The entertainment capital ground to a standstill. The writers’ strike eventually ended on 27 September.
Leaders of Sag-Aftra were cautiously optimistic when they resumed negotiations on 2 October for the first time since the strike began. The studio heads had cut a deal just over a week earlier with striking writers over many of the same issues that concern the actors, including streaming residuals and AI.
But the talks kept stalling and ultimately collapsed on 11 October, with the studios claiming that the two sides were too far apart to continue. According to the AMPTP, the union was making an unreasonable demand for a fee for each subscriber to streaming services.
The AMPTP said in a statement to the Associated Press: “Sag-Aftra gave the member companies an ultimatum: either agree to a proposal for a tax on subscribers as well as all other open items, or else the strike would continue. The member companies responded to Sag-Aftra’s ultimatum that unfortunately, the tax on subscribers poses an untenable economic burden.”
Sag-Aftra leaders see it differently. They contend that it is ridiculous to frame their demand as a tax on customers. They say it was the executives themselves who wanted to shift from a model based on a show’s popularity to one based on the number of subscribers.
Flynn says: “We proposed a reasonable proposal for profit sharing. Originally it was 2% of profit generated, basically what equates to $0.57 per subscriber yearly on streaming platforms. Then we dropped to 1% of that and that’s when the AMPTP walked away. It’s not Sag-Aftra’s fault that the direction of the industry means we have to come up with new ways for our members to qualify for health insurance. It’s the streaming market that’s created this.
“Fifty-seven cents per subscriber on a yearly basis – that was going to break the bank over at Netflix? For whatever reason that’s unreasonable so they left. It goes to show that they still want to continue to be greedy, they still want to continue to play games and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they would try to starve us out through the holidays. That’s a very real thing they could do.”
But just as with the Halloween wrinkle, some members question whether their union got it right. Actor Danny Hogan says that, based on what he has read in media reports, Sag-Aftra’s push for money per subscriber may have been an “ego ask” that pushed the studios away.
“I will just tell you, from a mental health standpoint, that was pretty crushing because I had a lot of hope. I had spent four months in the summer building physically, weightlifting, and was in the middle of a 10-week cut to be lean for camera and then it’s like, oh, OK, well, great, here we are, it’s not ending. We don’t know when it’s ending. It was very frustrating.”
Hogan is having to take other jobs to avoid financial hardships. He has been hired by a faith-based marriage company to drive their conference materials across the country in a 26ft-long box truck. He says: “I’m just doing whatever I got to do to feed my family. I don’t think it’s uncommon that you see people doing two or three different things to be able to still make acting the primary. Lyft, Uber, DoorDash. I know one gentleman started a private security company.”
Kieren van den Blink, a Sag-Aftra member since 1997, has had to scramble for alternative sources of income as well as joining the picket lines at several studios. She coaches college and grad school essay writing and teaches Spanish via Zoom. “I’ve surrounded myself with people who believe in me but I’d be lying if I said to you I haven’t fallen short more than once with bills,” she says.
“I’ve had to have conversations and be honest with people about where I am. I’m doing my best. I’ve even taken a money class to burnish my financial intelligence and begin to look at numbers differently and my relationship to numbers. It all comes back to the strike and understanding my value and what I bring as an actor.”
Van den Blink recalls being on the picket line with a leading actor in the TV series Suits, which ended in 2019 but has broken records since hitting Netflix this year. “Before I could even say anything she looked at me and said, ‘I’ve made, like, $3.’ I said, ‘What? Everyone and their mother is watching Suits. Like, my dog watches Suits. How is that possible?’ She said, ‘Because with streaming it’s a different beast.’”
She adds: “The residuals were embarrassing. It’s a little scrap of a scrap of a scrap. I have a friend who stars in a network series and her residuals have bought her more than one home. It’s a humungous difference in our quality of life, our ability to prosper.”
The guild did try to create exceptions that would allow some actors to work under an interim agreement. Numerous independent production companies not affiliated with the AMPTP are allowed to film with Sag-Aftra actors during the strike if they agree to terms that the union proposed, which include a new minimum wage rate 11% higher than before, guarantees about revenue sharing and AI protections.
But the waivers have been controversial since they could allow big-name stars to work even as hard-up actors sweat on the picket line. Perhaps sensitive to such optics, the actor Viola Davis decided to step away from her film G20, despite it being granted an exception. The film is independently financed but set to be distributed by Amazon Studios, an AMPTP member.
Elizabeth Fowler, an independent film producer forced to suspend two productions, describes the current situation as “dire” and wishes more thought had been put into the design of the interim agreement. “It was kind of a one size fits all and there is nothing one size fits all about independent production. That one size fits all ended up eliminating many productions that could have and should have gotten an interim agreement quickly.
“I had a film that was set in the UK: UK director, all lead UK actors, non-union Canadian writer. I wanted to cast one role with a US actor and was already in process with that actor before the strike and I couldn’t. It was like, ‘Sorry, you’re number 1,490 in a list and we’re on 200’. I said repeatedly, this is going to go down, this is going to have to get pushed. Ironically, it was like dealing with a robot. There was no attention given.”
Hollywood is firing on at least some cylinders again with TV writers penning new seasons of shows that had been suspended and film writers finishing scripts. But the final product will have to wait for the end of the actors’ strike, and production will remain suspended on many TV shows and dozens of films, including Wicked, Deadpool 3 and Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2. When will reserves be exhausted so that viewers feel the pinch?
“I’m not sure if it’s the strike that’s caused it, but I think we already have noticed it,” says Fowler, adding with a laugh: “Honestly, I never thought I’d be watching The Golden Bachelor – let’s put it that way.”
Hogan adds: “If there aren’t enough projects that get the interim agreement, you’re going to see less holiday films, whether that’s Lifetime, Hallmark, whatever and then maybe no new content for streaming. We’re on that cusp right now because the WGA, the writers, got their deal. They then have 10 weeks to get the writers’ rooms together and that’s the window that we’re in. We know it. The studios know it. We have probably about another four to six weeks to get going before it’s a detriment to everybody.”
Indeed, the awards season could also be in trouble. The Emmys already moved its ceremony from September to January and might be forced to postpone again. The Oscars are a long way off in March but the campaigns to win them are usually well under way by now.
Performers are prohibited from promoting their films at press junkets or on red carpets. Whereas the director Martin Scorsese has been giving interviews about his new Oscar contender Killers of the Flower Moon, the Sag-Aftra members Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro have not.
And for other Sag-Aftra members, the question is how to keep up with paying bills. Actors Donzaleigh Abernathy and her husband Dar Dixon save money by cooking at home and walking instead of driving. Abernathy says: “We’re very frugal but it is more important to stand for what is right and to take care of all the members in our union than to just satisfy the needs of those who are wealthy.
“The majority of the people in our union don’t earn enough money to make health insurance and things like that. We do and sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the greater good of others. I have a neighbour who is an extra and it would be horrible if AI put her out of work.”
Abernathy is not giving up hope that the end is in sight. She adds: “I have faith in the studios. They’re not stupid people. They’re brilliant people and they just have to be fair and I believe that they will be. I have faith. Otherwise I wouldn’t be in this industry. I would quit and go do something else but I’m not going to.”
