Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Companies that implemented abortion benefits saw mixed feedback, Rihanna's Savage X Fenty drops a collection of maternity clothes, and Fortune senior writer Maria Aspan discusses the Hollywood strikes and the entertainment industry's workplace problems with author Maureen Ryan. Have a thoughtful Thursday.
- Broken dreams. Hollywood is having a very “best of times, worst of times” summer. Yes, it’s celebrating the runaway success of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie–which last weekend crossed the $1 billion sales mark, making Gerwig the first solo female director in history to reach that milestone. Yet at the same time, large swathes of the entertainment industry are now on strike. Writers walked out in May, more than 100 days ago; and last month, about a week before Barbie hit theaters, actors joined them—marking the first such double strike since 1960. Neither group is expected to come back to work anytime soon.
Actors and writers are striking over basic workplace protections and pay models used by movie studios and streaming companies, as well as these employers’ use of artificial intelligence. But the conditions underlying these workers’ dissatisfaction (and they are workers, even if their work looks more glamorous than most) go back decades, says Maureen Ryan, author of Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, a scathing new book on the entertainment industry’s pervasive workplace problems. From Harvey Weinstein to #OscarsSoWhite, waves of reckonings have laid bare just how toxic Hollywood often is as a workplace—and inequality, discrimination, and harassment remain rampant across the industry.
