SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher Joins WGA Picket Line: ‘This Strike Is a Strike for Everybody in the Industry’

The Writers Guild of America West received the most robust support from their sister unions in Los Angeles at the “Unions Strike Back” Rally on Friday evening.

Just last week, the guild voted unanimously to ask members for authorization to go on strike if the guild is unable to reach a new deal with studios.The vote comes ahead of negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group representing studios. Those are set to begin June 7. SAG-AFTRA’s current contract expires June 30.“SAG-AFTRA is taking a big bold step as the union prepares for our upcoming TV, theatrical and streaming negotiations,” Drescher said in a voice message posted on the guild’s Facebook page.

Saying that “acting careers are at stake,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher has sent an audio message to the guild’s members urging them to vote “Yes” for strike authorization.

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.”

SAG-AFTRA and Cameo for Business (C4B), the celebrity digital marketplace that connects talent with fans and brands, have reached what the guild is calling a “groundbreaking” agreement that allows its members to work under a SAG-AFTRA contract and count their C4B earnings toward their pension and health benefits.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer SAG-AFTRA has struck a deal with celebrity video platform Cameo to cover the brand deals that members make through Cameo for Business (C4B) under a guild contract. The new pact, “C4B x SAG-AFTRA Agreement,” will allow SAG-AFTRA members to count C4B earnings toward health and pension benefits, just as those earnings become a growing concern for out of work actors while the Writers Guild of America’s strike against Hollywood studios and their organization, Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), rages on. SAG-AFTRA has been a big supporter of WGA on the picket line over the first three weeks of the strike, with SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher being very vocal ahead of the the actors guild entering its own contract negotiations with the AMPTP on June 7.

a statement announcing the vote.While unanimity among SAG-AFTRA’s board is no guarantee that rank and file membership will agree to a strike, the issues listed in the guild’s statement very closely mirror those raised by the Writers Guild of America, which is in the third week of a strike that is increasingly interrupting Hollywood business.Writers have been on strike since May 2, and in part are seeking to reverse recent trends in the industry that have come to define the streaming era — for instance, they note sky-high salaries executives earn while creatives, especially writers, are struggling to support themselves. WGA is in particular calling out industry practices that they say have turned Hollywood into a “gig economy,” such as so-called “mini rooms” where writers with a television pitch must form a writer room on their own dime and create an entire season’s worth of scripts before a show is even greenlit.

SAG-AFTRA’s national board voted unanimously today to recommend that the union’s members authorize a strike in advance of its upcoming negotiations for a new film and TV contract.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer SAG-AFTRA announced Wednesday that it will hold a strike authorization vote as it seeks to get its “ducks in a row” ahead of June 7 negotiations with the major studios. The vote does not mean that the performers’ union will necessarily join the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines after its contract expires on June 30. In a press release, the union said its negotiating committee decided that a strike authorization would provide “maximum bargaining leverage” for the talks. “We must get all our ducks in a row should the need present itself,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in the release. “The prospect of a strike is not a first option, but a last resort. As my dad always says, ‘Better to have and not need than to need and not have!’”

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.

scathing message on Facebook, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star Wil Wheaton blasted “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings for crossing the picket line during the Writer’s Guild of America strike, giving him a stark warning.“This is a VERY small town, Ken Jennings, and we will all remember this,” Wheaton typed on the social media platform. “Your privilege may protect you right now, but we will *never* forget.”He also included the hashtag “#WGAStrong” in the post.The actor continued his thoughts in the comments section of the post, calling out those who were speaking negatively about unions.“Hey y’all, if you’re here to s–t on unions, you can f–k right off.

SAG-AFTRA’s leadership, although often divided along internal party lines, presented a united front at the Los Angeles local’s annual membership meeting yesterday. They stressed the importance of solidarity in advance of the guild’s upcoming contract negotiations, sources tell Deadline.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher has told her members that as the union prepares for its upcoming contract negotiations, which start June 7: “We must focus on modernizing our outdated and conservative contract. It is essential that we reshape our agreement to better reflect the new digital and streaming business model that is rapidly changing our industry.”

After yesterday’s Imagine Dragons party outside Netflix, it was Paramount’s turn to pop.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The Directors Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced a joint media blackout on Wednesday, as the two sides met for their first day of collective bargaining. The DGA negotiators are convening at the AMPTP headquarters in Sherman Oaks to present their proposals, which include a hike in international streaming residuals and an increase in scale minimums to account for inflation. The talks are beginning on the ninth day of the Writers Guild of America strike. Talks with the writers broke down on May 1, after the studios rejected WGA demands for a TV staff size minimum, a minimum number of weeks worked and a viewership-based streaming residual, among other issues.

Fran Drescher. While on Sirius XM’s “The Julie Mason Show,” the actor teased that the possible November special could “maybe” become a backdoor pilot. She also highlighted the importance of SAG sticking with the Writers Guild of America during the WGA strike.

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.”

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

Actors’ Equity Association, the union representing theater actors and stage managers, is inviting its members and allies to join the WGA picket line outside HBO and Amazon offices tomorrow.

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.