Hollywood Teamsters Chief Lindsay Dougherty On Potential WGA Strike, Picket Lines, Union Solidarity & Studios’ “Bullsh*t”

Refresh for updates Amid all the noise here at the Cannes Film Festivals about festival sexual predators, Johnny Depp’s return in Jeanne du Barry tonight and the admitted assaulting history of that movie’s director Maiwen; the WGA Strike is not forgotten.

For the past two years, Xo, Kitty creator, executive producer and co-showrunner Jenny Han and executive producer and co-showrunner Sascha Rothchild worked on Netflix’s spinoff series from the hit All The Boys I’ve Loved Before movie trilogy. As the series holds its premiere tonight at the Netflix Tudum theater in Hollywood, the duo, along with the rest of the show’s writers, won’t be on hand to celebrate with the cast, producers and executives.

For the second time in a week, the Writers Guild of America has shuttered Billions.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher took some heat for comments she made on the picket line May 8, including how she doesn’t think what is “very important to writers … is the kind of the stuff that we’re [the actors] going after.” But while guesting on SiriusXM’s The Julie Mason Show, the former star of The Nanny said both her union and the WGA were “all cogs in the same wheel” and that “it’s important that we sit by our sister unions in solidarity.”

Vice President Kamala Harris’ appearance at an MTV-sponsored town hall has been postponed amid the the Writers Guild of America strike.

When are things not strange in Hollywood? Should we be surprised that there is always some industry or world crises crashing an awards season? Probably not, but it’s been quite a long time since a work stoppage affected the Primetime Emmy Awards. And, as we’ll discuss later, that means while writers form picket lines, actors and directors are still engaged in that Emmy nomination fight.

SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher joined members of her guild marching in solidarity with Writers Guild of America members Monday on the picket lines in front of the entrance to Paramount Pictures’ backlot.Amid this display of solidarity, Drescher is preparing with SAG-AFTRA to begin talks on their own new contract, and she is signaling that actors need major change in Hollywood just as much as writers.“We can’t keep building on a contract that was developed in the 1980s,” Drescher told TheWrap. “I’m hoping that we go in with a new perspective, a different portal to enter the conversation just as we did with other talks that we were successful in resolving.

Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 has hired former Netflix senior counsel Kay Kimmel to serve as the local’s in-house counsel, where she will also assist as counsel to the Teamsters Motion Picture and Theatrical Trade Division.

Another TV shoot has been disrupted by striking writers, Michelle and Robert King’s supernatural drama for Paramount+ Evil, which has been filming its fourth season at Brooklyn Stages in Brooklyn.

Day four of the writers strike and there’s no sign of slowing down for the writers marching in Hollywood.

SAG-AFTRA, which starts its contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on June 7, is in “the same boat” with the Writers Guild as it strikes for a fair contract, SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told a cheering crowd Wednesday night at the WGA strike rally at the Shrine Auditorium.

You are reading an exclusive WrapPRO article for free. Want to level up your entertainment career? Subscribe to WrapPRO.David Mandel isn’t one to sugarcoat. It’s a trait that appears in his work, from the vicious insults of “Veep” to the intentionally reprehensible characters at the center of HBO’s “White House Plumbers.” It also emerged when TheWrap asked the longtime series creator his thoughts on the currently unfolding WGA strike.

Hollywood labor presented a united front last night at the Shrine Auditorium in support of the Writers Guild of America’s ongoing strike, which is now in its third day. That included Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399, whose secretary-treasurer and chief negotiator Lindsay Dougherty had the biggest mic-drop moment in front of the crowd of 1,800 WGA West members.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor It’s deja vu all over again for Patric Verrone, the former WGA West president who led the guild during the 2007-08 writers strike. Verrone, who spoke to Variety while picketing outside Fox Studios in West Los Angeles, sees a number of parallels to the dynamic that led to the work stoppage in November 2007 but also a number of important differences. He is a member of the negotiating committee that has been wrangling this latest three-year contract with executives at the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. “I would say the chief similarity is that in 2007, and in 2023, the management didn’t believe us, when we said we were going to strike and that our demands were genuine, and that we had the full support of our membership,” Verrone said. “There was skepticism on the part of the companies that this would actually happen.”

Writers Guild of America is settling in for a strike that could last weeks if not months. But Kay Cannon, creator of the “Pitch Perfect” film trilogy and member of the guild’s negotiating committee, feels that her union is ready for what lies ahead. “This is different than the 2007 strike,” Cannon said during a roundtable video discussion with TheWrap.

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

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The Writers Guild of America West held a rally Wednesday night to demonstrate solidarity with the other Hollywood unions in their collective contract battles against Hollywood’s major employers. About 1,800 guild members attended the meeting at the Shrine Auditorium, and heard from WGA leaders about the reasons behind the two-day old strike. One of the stars of the show, however, was Lindsay Dougherty, the 39-year-old leader of Teamsters Local 399. “We’re all sticking together,” Dougherty told Variety outside the event. “We have an opportunity to change things in this industry, and the only way we’re going to do that is if we’re together.”

Check back for updates… On the second day of the Writers Guild of America’s first strike in 15 years, the guild is holding big meetings on both coasts with members to detail how they got here, what going on and what’s next.

Jay Leno showed a little solidarity for the writers Tuesday by appealing to their tummies.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer NBCUniversal executives did not comment on the writers strike at its New York-based NewFront presentation to advertisers Tuesday, even as hundreds of Writers Guild of America members and their supporters rallied in a picket line outside the 5th Avenue event. The scripts for the occasion, led by Peacock president Kelly Campbell, were prepped ahead of Monday’s late-night call for a strike once contract negotiations broke down between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). They were not modified Tuesday to include remarks about the strike, despite the fact TV and film writers had gathered in mass outside at the WGA East’s only planned protest for Day 1 of the work stoppage.