Actors’ Equity To Join WGA Picket Line At NYC’s HBO And Amazon Offices

Striking film and television writers got a signal boost on Thursday from U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (d-NY), who spoke at a rally outside the East Coast offices of Paramount Global in the busy heart of Manhattan’s Times Square. 

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Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Colin Farrell, Mariska Hargitay, Danny Strong, Paula Pell, Rachel Dratch, Michael Kelly and Craig Zobel were among the stars who came out to the writers strike picket line outside Paramount Global’s New York City office in Times Square Thursday. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D.-N.Y., and local politicians spoke at the event in support of the Writers Guild of America’s (WGA) cause against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that has led to a four-week-and-counting work stoppage due to the organizations’ inability to ink a new contract May 1. “This is about what’s right. We’ve seen income inequality grow exponentially over the last decade; and in your business, it has never been more present,” Gillibrand said to the crowd, filled with not only WGA members, but also those from SAG-AFTRA, IATSE and Teamsters, among other unions. “We see writers working hard every day to produce content and we have an unfair playing field. Not only does AI want to displace our writers, they simply can’t. AI generates content based on what’s been written before the work you did last year, and the year before. It’s not original. It’s not imaginative. It doesn’t come from the human heart. It’s not about a human experience. It’s not about what people actually want to learn about or know about or see or experience. That is what writers bring to the equation every single time. So this strike is so important for the future of this country. It’s about the value of workers; workers and what they create is fundamentally valuable.”

Striking writers in New York made a bid on Monday to disrupt work on American Horror Story by picketing outside a production facility in Queens where the popular FX series known for its macabre plot lines and star-studded casts is filming season 12.

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Siouxsie Sioux‘s headline set last night (May 20) due to severe weather.The event at Brookside at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, which was set to be her first performance in the US for 15 years, was cut short during Iggy Pop and The Human League‘s set.According to the Orange County Register newspaper, Pop was performing ‘The Passenger’ when his microphone was cut and an announcement over the PA alerted attendees to leave. “OK, we have lightning, we need to evacuate the stage I’m told,” Iggy told the crowd.Human League frontman Phil Oakey also cut the band’s set short and apologised before urging fans to “vacate”.Festival goers were also instructed at the direction of the Pasadena Fire Department and the event’s organisers to exit the site and move to protected areas.Due to severe weather, please exit the event site and move to your vehicles or protected areas outside of the event site for safety.

With just the CW left tomorrow, the near-talent-free upfronts are winding down, and shows are still being shuttered in New York City, while on the picket lines in LA there was Mariachism, tacos, tunes and some Mandalorians to galvanize the troops.

It was a tale of two coasts today, as WGA picketers and their allies targeted Disney’s upfront presentation in New York and also the company’s Burbank lot in Los Angeles. And the two scenes were very different.

Striking writers in New York City said they disrupted filming of FBI: Most Wanted for a second straight day by heading off a planned location shoot at a public park in Brooklyn on Friday morning and later by causing slowdowns of work on the Dick Wolf-EP’d crime drama starring Dylan McDermott and Alexa Davalos at a nearby soundstage. 

Rep. Katie Porter joined writers on the picket line at the Culver Studios in Los Angeles on Friday in solidarity with the ongoing WGA strike.

Showtime’s The Chi is the latest series whose production has been disrupted by the ongoing writers strike. According to sources, the hit drama, which is based in Chicago, filmed Friday morning before moving to another location, which had a picket line already in place.

Mandy Patinkin is feeling the rage.

On the West Coast, the chief negotiator for the striking Writers Guild of America, Ellen Stutzman, is more than a week into an existential battle between the 20,000 union members she represents and the movie and television studios that are, for now, not at the bargaining table. 

tweeted a selfie at the New York picket lines captioned “Let’s do this.”Odenkirk and Patinkin also posed together for a photo, which the latter captioned with: “Saul’s unite.” In addition to Odenkirk’s work as Saul Goodman, Patinkin is also known for playing a character named Saul in “Homeland.”Saul’s unite! #wgastrong Support our writers! pic.twitter.com/VdyElwh7C5Adam Scott, who can most recently be seen in “Severance,” also joined the picket line. Ran into Mandy Patinkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Adam Scott on the WGA picket line.

Striking writers marching Wednesday in New York City were joined by SAG-AFTRA members Bob Odenkirk and Mandy Patinkin.

Some of Hollywood’s highest paid writers have been noticeably absent from the picket line over the last eight days — that is, until Tuesday.

Production on Freeform’s Good Trouble fifth season was halted for the day as a result of WGA picketing.

A trio of SNL greats joined the WGA picket line Tuesday at Silvercup Studios in Queens.

Latino WGA members and their allies descended upon Universal Studios en masse Monday beginning at 5 a.m. to picket on the sixth day of the Hollywood writers strike.

This is a dark moment for frazzled members of the writing fraternity.