Fran Drescher Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

The writers and the studios are set to get back around the negotiating table.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Media watchdog GLAAD released its Studio Responsibility Index on Thursday, using its annual ranking of queer representation in mainstream films to stand with striking unions SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America. Convening in-person at the Los Angeles LGBTQ Center’s Ed Gould Plaza in Hollywood, leadership from both show business unions, queer talent and GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis spoke of the dangers that work stoppages from the strokes pose to inclusive storytelling.

With the actors’ strike now in its 63rd day, SAG-AFTRA leaders are ramping up their rhetoric against the studio heads, accusing them in the latest issue of the SAG-AFTRA Magazine of “behaving like petty tyrants,” “would-be feudal lords” and “land barons in feudal times.”

Hollywood has been making steady progress toward including more LBGTQ characters into its storylines, according to the latest report from GLAAD, but SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher says that those gains are in jeopardy because of the studios’ intransigence in reaching a fair deal to end the ongoing strikes by actors and writers.

As the SAG-AFTRA strike clocked its 62nd day, and the WGA’s 135th, the former held a massive solidarity march today from Netflix HQ on Van Ness Blvd to the Melrose gates of Paramount to juice guilds’ spirits with the entertainment industry work stoppage running past Labor Day.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer SAG-AFTRA held a massive march and rally outside the Paramount studio on Wednesday, as the union marked 62 days on strike. Union leaders argued that the strike has resonated across industries, as workers stand up to “unchecked corporate greed.” “What’s at stake is bigger than just the entertainment industry,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s executive director. “It’s about the livelihoods of everyone who needs a job to earn a living.” He urged actors to use their voices and authenticity to speak for the broader labor movement.

EXCLUSIVE: Fran Drescher is less concerned with meeting of several showrunners with WGA leadership this week and more concerned with studios and streamers getting back to the bargaining table to make a fair deal.

EXCLUSIVE: After showing her strong support for interim agreements while promoting her film Memory on the festival circuit, Jessica Chastain is backing that up with Dreams, which has received a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement last month. The Teorema pic reunites her with her Memory director Michel Franco and recently finished filming in San Francisco, where some 60 actors and 50 below-the-line crew members were employed for the shoot. Rupert Friend among those featured in the cast.

Tim Burton is sharing his thoughts on AI getting inspired by his work for new creations. Earlier this year, BuzzFeed shared a piece where it prompted AI to “Tim Burton-Ize Disney Movies.”

Michaela Zee Jessica Chastain is encouraging independent producers to sign interim agreements amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. “If a majority of independent producers, come forward and sign the Interim Agreement deal it will show the AMPTP how wrong they are when they say our contract terms are unrealistic or unreasonable,” Chastain wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday.

Ezra Knight has been reelected president of SAG-AFTRA’s New York Local in a landslide victory that also gave his running mates a clean sweep of the election. Knight received nearly 73% of the votes cast in a four-person race for president. His four vice presidential running mates – Linda Powell, Anthony Rapp, Jim Kerr and Liz Zazzi – were also elected.

Fran Drescher was re-electedSAG-AFTRA president for a two-year term on Sept. 8.The actress and comedian received 23,080 votes to beat out actress and writer Maya Gilbert-Dunbar’s 5,276 votes in the election, which took place amid the union’s strike against Hollywood studios.

Fran Drescher isn’t going anywhere as SAG-AFTRA President.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Fran Drescher has been elected to a second term as president of SAG-AFTRA, as the union’s first studio strike in 43 years nears the two-month mark. Drescher was elected with 81.4% of the vote, defeating Maya Gilbert-Dunbar, who took 18.6%. Joely Fisher took 70.3% in her race for a second term as secretary-treasurer.

Fran Drescher has been reelected president of SAG-AFTRA in a landslide. Drescher, winning a second two-year term in votes counted Friday, handily defeated independent candidate Maya Gilbert-Dunbar. Drescher received 23,080 votes to Gilbert-Dunbar’s 5,276, with 22.84% of the guild’s 124,477 eligible members casting ballots.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Two challengers in the SAG-AFTRA election are urging the union to bring in an outside mediator to help resolve the actors strike, which has gone on for nearly two months. Maya Gilbert-Dunbar, who is running against Fran Drescher for president of the union, argued that guild leadership has been too passive, and needs to show more urgency in restarting talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. “Chain your asses up to the damn door of the Sherman Oaks building to show how serious you are,” Gilbert-Dunbar said.

With SAG-AFTRA members already on strike against films and TV shows and voting now underway to authorize a separate strike against the video game industry, the guild’s leaders are saying that a dual strike, if it comes to that, “makes sense” because the issues at stake in both contracts “mirror” each other.

A remorseful SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher turned to social media for a little self-reflection and a promise to do better as she continues to lead a “major labor battle.”

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer With one strike already underway, SAG-AFTRA announced Friday that it will seek authorization for a second strike against the major video game companies. The union said that talks on a new video game contract have reached a “stalemate,” and that the strike authorization vote is needed as leverage to win wage increases and protection from artificial intelligence. SAG-AFTRA declared a strike on July 13 against the major TV and film companies, shutting down productions around the globe.

SAG-AFTRA, which has been on strike against film and scripted TV productions since July 14, is now gearing up for another possible strike – this one against the video game industry. The guild’s last strike against the gaming companies, in 2016-17, lasted 183 days.

Trustees of the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan have unanimously agreed to a one-calendar-quarter extension of health coverage for certain qualified participants who would otherwise lose coverage on Oct. 1, 2023. The extension accounts for jobs that may have been lost in May and June of this year due to the Writers Guild strike. The WGA has been on strike since May 2, SAG-AFTRA since July 14.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Administrators of SAG-AFTRA’s health plan have made a big move to extend health care coverage for members who would otherwise lose their eligibility because of production shutdowns sparked by the Writers Guild of America strike. SAG-AFTRA Health Plan board of trustees voted unanimously to extend coverage by one calendar quarter for some members who would be off the rolls as of Oct. 1.

The power of a single vote was on full display yesterday in Nashville, where actor and stuntman Bill “Bilbro” Yarbrough defeated his nearest rival by a single vote to win a seat on the guild’s national board of directors.

For just about every decade that there has been a sitcom on television, it’s always been easy to identify those stars who shine bright as the current face of comedy. In the ’50s, it was Jackie Gleason and Lucille Ball. In the ’60s, it was Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith. The ’70s brought us Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore and Bea Arthur, followed by Sherman Hemsley, Bill Cosby and Michael J. Fox in the ’80s, Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne Barr and the cast of Friends in the ’90s, Charlie Sheen and Bernie Mac in the early aughts and Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jim Parsons in 2006 and beyond. 

“How did I become Tom Joad? I used to write for a living.”

SAG-AFTRA has revealed more thinking behind its interim agreements, with leadership saying the initiative is “designed to undermine the production slates and timing of the AMPTP companies and ensure that they come back to the table”.

told the Los Angeles Times that attempts to arrange a meeting with Netflix — to demand that members be compensated with the same residual model as American members of SAG-AFTRA — have gone unanswered for months.“One of [Netflix’s] first priorities when entering the local market should be to establish some channel of communication with groups like us,” the country’s answer to Fran Drescher said.“But there’s no answer at all.”Residuals have recently been in the news as American actors and writers striking for fair compensation post their often insultingly meager checks, ranging from a single penny to a few dollars. As opposed to the royalties paid in broadcasting, residuals must be paid in perpetuity to actors in the United States, based on how many times their films and shows are streamed.

This is Day 94 of the WGA strike and Day 21 of the SAG-AFTRA strike

Joe Otterson TV Reporter SAG-AFTRA national president Fran Drescher stopped off at multiple picket lines in New York on Thursday to rally the members of the guild as their strike continues. “I just want to say I am so grateful for your enthusiasm and your commitment to this strike,” Drescher told the pickets outside HBO’s New York offices. “It means everything.

Although SAG-AFTRA’s leading political factions have united around the reelection of President Fran Drescher and Secretary-Treasurer Joely Fisher, they’re not running unopposed in the guild’s upcoming election. Independent candidate Maya Gilbert-Dunbar will face off against Drescher and indie candidate Peter Antico will challenge Fisher, all four of whom have now officially qualified to appear on the ballot.

In the wake of yesterday’s upbeat news that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the WGA are heading back for talks this Friday, SAG-AFTRA’s Duncan Crabtree-Ireland says that as far as actors go, it’s still crickets from the producers.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher again took aim at the heads of the film and television conglomerates, calling them “greed-driven and disrespectful” and their corporate culture “maniacal” in remarks Tuesday at a rally outside New York City Hall. 

Stephen Amell‘s strong feelings about the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike aren’t sitting well with fellow members of the Arrowverse.

Stephen Amell, whose Starz drama series Heels returned for its second season over the weekend, is not going to the mat for the actors strike that is currently taking place in Hollywood.

SAG-AFTRA has released a statement projects that are allowed to film during the strike.

While Viola Davis’ upcoming movie G20 reached a temporary agreement with SAG-AFTRA to continue filming, she is taking a step back amid the ongoing union strike.