It’s official: Hollywood is on strike. There is no way back. At 12 pm on Friday, the announcement that the actors union (SAG-AFTRA) had made hours before came into force: by not reaching an agreement to renew its collective contract with the studios, its 160,000 components decided to stop. And they have amply demonstrated it by being deployed by half a dozen studios in Los Angeles and also in New York.
The pickets (picket line, in English, because they are always in a line and people are constantly walking) have been seen and felt under the heat wave of Los Angeles, which this Friday exceeds 31 degrees, a very high temperature for the city. But he hasn’t backed down on the thousands of people who have yelled, walked and blown their proclamations and whistles outside the studio doors. The Netflix offices, located on Sunset Boulevard, in the heart of Hollywood, have been the busiest first thing in the morning, because the visible faces of the union, with its president, Fran Drescher, arrived there around 9:20 in the morning. , in the lead, followed by his discreet and skilled right-hand man, the chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.
The actress known for the series of the nineties The babysitter It has been the star of undoubtedly massive demonstrations, with hundreds of people walking up and down the doors of the studios, among them many scriptwriters who, after two months on strike, have wanted to support their colleagues, and with cars honking constantly in his path as a sign of support, but in which familiar faces have been missed. The presence of actors, as they were when they started the strike of famous writers like Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Nixon or Pete Davidson, who brought them pizzas. In the first hours of the strike, and already in the middle of the holiday season, there was not too famous to be seen. At the Disney headquarters, for example, he has been part of the cast of the series This Is Us.
But Drescher made up for everything with his enthusiasm and charisma. Pure magnetism for the American media, who have not stopped looking for her juicy statements in a fiery tone since yesterday, upon her arrival at the doors of Netflix early in the morning, she repeated again how disappointed she was with the studies, but also that she felt “tremendously excited” by the support she had received from all parts of the world. Drescher has known how to insist on an idea with which to avoid the possible rejection that ordinary citizens may feel for this strike: that this is a stoppage of normal people, who do not earn millions of euros, but of normal people. A message that is tried to be transmitted from all sides to prevent this from looking like a war between the elites. As actress Caroline Renard successfully tweeted, “as a member of SAG-AFTRA, you have to earn $26,000 a year [23.000 euros] in order to qualify for health insurance. 87% of union members do not reach that annual amount”.
With almost no voice, wearing a cap that qualified her as a member of the negotiating team, Drescher has not shy away from criticizing the most powerful in the industry. If Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, assured that the acting demands were “unrealistic”, she has qualified these statements by the head of the multinational (who in 2021 earned 45 million dollars and in 2022 another 15, and who intends to cut 7,000 jobs) as “disgusting and tactless.”
Drescher has been accompanied by part of that team that accompanies her in the negotiations, including some familiar faces, such as Frances Fisher, Ben Whitehair, Michelle Hurd, Joely Fisher or Sean Astin, who played Sam Sagacious gamji in The Lord of the rings. At the union’s second stop in the morning, at the gates of Paramount Studios, on Melrose Avenue, Astin stated in a talk with the media that the interpreters went on strike “with all humility”, but that they were described as “as ‘ uncivilized’ is a great lack of respect”: “It is the public who really values the actors”.
On the strike posters, some black with the SAG logo, many others personalized with photographs, drawings and messages, read proclamations such as “no contract [colectivo], there are no actors”, “We are irreplaceable”, “You need us”, “Without actors there are no superheroes”, “Make us an offer that we cannot close”, or “Give the actors their happy ending”. One of them was carried by Katherine Ko, accompanied by her husband and her daughter, a few months old, in the cart. She had come to demonstrate during her lunch break, because she, like so many others, in addition to being an actress, has a second job. “Because if not, it’s not sustainable,” she said. “This is important, and this is the time.”
Groups of friends, single people, families with babies and children, screenwriter-actor couples… and also actor-actress couples, like the one formed by Karyna Shackelford and Chris Pecchenino, protested in the studios. At Paramount, the couple lamented how they had gotten here for what they described as selfishness on the part of the studios. “Like most of us, many of us have two jobs, there are people who have to drive Uber cars… The middle class is falling all over the world, including among us,” lamented Shackelford, an interpreter and screenwriter, who assured that they will go to protests as much as they can, probably a couple of times a week, “because the bills have to be paid.” “We don’t want to go on strike,” Pecchenino said, “but we must.” If the musicians have royalties, the actors should also have them, because with our work, our voice, our body, we create characters that otherwise would not exist”, affirmed the couple. She went a step further: “People have to cancel their subscriptions to platforms. We must start now. Money… It’s the only thing that worries them”.
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