This is Day 94 of the WGA strike and Day 21 of the SAG-AFTRA strike
SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher joined striking actors and writers in New York on Thursday morning, telling picketers outside Paramount headquarters in Times Square that her union won’t agree to any deal with film and television studios that leaves members unable to make a living.
Two days after she testified about the strike at a New York City Council hearing, the Queens native rallied fellow union members with a promise to stay true to their demands once negotiations resume with the AMPTP.
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“I’m so thrilled to see this level of enthusiasm and resolve and strength, and I promise you that we are not going to compromise,” The Nanny star said. “This is a seminal deal and there is no turning back. At some point you have to say we’ve had enough: We’re not going to get marginalized out of our livelihoods anymore and you have to step up on the plate and do right by workers. This is our moment.”
Drescher also visited a combined SAG-AFTRA and WGA picket line outside of Netflix offices in Manhattan’s Flatiron district. Netflix and its neighbor down the street, Warner Bros. Discovery, have been picketed weekly, and often daily, since writers went on strike in May. Thursday was no exception, with a boisterous crowd of several dozen marchers including actor and writer Justin Theroux and Law & Order mainstay Jill Hennessy walking the block outside Netflix’s front door.
The Netflix rally wrapped with a speech from Sue Berch, a SAG-AFTRA member who has served as a picket-line voice for striking union members while introducing herself as “just an actor”. Berch, wielding a bullhorn, praised Drescher for her earlier appearance at the rally and reminded the group, “We are not just actors”.
“We are stunt performers, we are background artists. We are voice actors. We are dancers. We are singers. We are intimacy coordinators,” Berch said. “We are a diversity of talent, which means that negotiating our contracts is a complicated process. … But the one thing that is in-common for all of us is that we’re all just trying to make a decent living, put food on the table and give our kids a decent life.”
Berch said that actors and writers “will win” this labor fight, casting it not just as a prediction but an imperative.
“Because if we let them break us, that’s it, we’re done,” she said. “This is a consequential contract for all of us. … This is it, baby. This one determines whether or not we have any chance of making a living doing this thing we love, doing this thing that brings joy to everybody else in the world.”
Meanwhile, over in LA, picketers outside of Disney were treated to a performance by Silversun Pickups.
The Swoon rockers have a couple of songs on the second installment of Netflix’s Lincoln Lawyer, which premieres today, and came out to support the writers and actors, as well as a group of music supervisors.
Over at Disney, actors such as Oliver Stark, who stars as Evan Buckley in Fox’s 9-1-1, and Tanner Buchanan, who plays Robby Keene in Netflix’s Cobra Kai, were out in force.
“I’m here striking to support the acting community and hope that we can all move toward having a fair deal and get back to work together as a collective,” Stark told Deadline.
Buchanan said he was striking “To make sure we’re fighting for the future of the industry and make sure that the unions are getting paid fairly and treated correctly”.
Elsewhere, there was a Fighting Irish-themed picket at Paramount, a Canadian picket (W.G.eh.) at Fox and rom-com-themed meetup at Warner Bros., while some rode 40 miles starting at Radford as part of the Bike The Strike movement.
NBCUniversal had live drums and jams at Gate 8. There will be increased focus on the FBI studio tomorrow as all of the other picket lines in the Valley in LA will be shut to give focus to the fact that there’s a new path to actually picket.
“We have been fighting Universal for our right to picket safely. Universal says they fixed the sidewalks (there’s no fixing the trees they mutilated), SAG-AFTRA wrote in a note to members.
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