Stars abounded at the Sag-Aftra rally in Times Square on Tuesday, as Hollywood actors continue their simultaneous strike with writers.
Actors including Bryan Cranston, Christine Baranski, F Murray Abraham, Wendell Pierce, Steve Buscemi, Christian Slater and Tituss Burgess spoke before a crowd at the “Rock the City for a Fair Contract” rally, with numerous others – Michael Shannon, BD Wong, Brendan Fraser, Jessica Chastain, Matt Bomer, Corey Stoll and Chloë Grace Moretz – demonstrating their support on stage.
Cranston delivered a particularly fiery speech that included a message to the Disney chief, Bob Iger, who has called the strikes “very disturbing” and said actors and writers were not being “realistic” with their expectations.
“We’ve got a message for Mr Iger,” the Breaking Bad and former Malcolm in the Middle star said. “I know, sir, that you look [at] things through a different lens. We don’t expect you to understand who we are.”
“But we ask you to hear us, and beyond that to listen to us when we tell you we will not be having our jobs taken away and given to robots,” he added, referring to concerns around the studios’ use of AI, which has been a major sticking point in negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). “We will not have you take away our right to work and earn a decent living. And lastly, and most importantly, we will not allow you to take away our dignity!”
Cranston began his remarks by noting one thing the guilds and AMPTP could agree on: “Our industry has changed exponentially.
“We are not in the same business model we were even 10 years ago,” he continued. “And yet, even though they admit that is the truth in today’s economy, they are fighting us tooth and nail to stick to the same economic system that is outmoded, outdated! They want us to step back in time. We cannot and we will not do that.”
Baranski spoke “personally” from her experience as a “working actor” as well as for the background and guest actors from her 13 years playing a lawyer on two shows – The Good Wife, on CBS, and The Good Fight, on CBS All Access and Paramount Plus. (Streaming platforms such as Paramount Plus pay much less in residuals than traditional networks, which is a major point of contention in negotiations.)
“On both shows, I consider these actors my colleagues and part of our creative family. Their contribution to the series’ success was indispensable, and I am here today speaking on their behalf,” she said. “They need fair and decent compensation, healthcare, retirement benefits and above all, respect and recognition for their contribution.” Baranski also called on executives with salaries in the millions to “share the wealth”.
“We will not live under corporate feudalism,” she added. “It is time, it is just simply time to make things right. Our contribution will not be undervalued, and we will not be robbed.”
The Bear star Liza Colón-Zayas, who said she had been a Sag member since 1994, echoed many others in noting that her residuals had “dwindled exponentially” and quoted Snoop Dogg: “Where the fuck is my money?”
Abraham, most recently nominated for an Emmy for the second season of The White Lotus, put the importance of the actors’ union bluntly: “Without a union, there is no middle class. Without a middle class, there is no democracy. Unions are good for America,” he said. “Every worker in this country should have these same benefits.”
Slater, star of Heathers and Mr Robot, touched on how the Sag union took care of his father when he struggled with mental illness toward the end of his life. “A lot of people gave up on him,” he said. “His union never gave up.”
Arguably the most passionate speech came from Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Sag-Aftra’s national executive director and chief negotiator, who spoke about the response from AMPTP negotiators during the final days before a strike was called on 14 July. Crabtree-Ireland said that when he and the Sag-Aftra president, Fran Drescher, spoke to three studio CEOs on the final day of bargaining in May, “we said: ‘Here’s all you have to do to make sure there’s no strike. All you have to do is make this fair deal.’
“And their response was, ‘No.’ Just like their response to so many of our proposals that we’ve said are essential for actors being treated in a respectful and fair way,” he continued. “Do actors get to have minimum wage increases that keep up with inflation? ‘No.’
“Do actors get to have a share of the streaming revenue that has been created because of their faces and their voices on these new platforms, these new businesses these companies are creating? ‘No. We don’t even want to talk about it.’
“Are they willing to give actors true informed consent about the use of their own face, voice, body, likeness in the creation of artificial intelligence digital doubles of them? ‘No.’”
The strike, he said, was “the result of big corporations that refuse to treat our members fairly”.
“And until these companies come to the table and make a fair and respectful deal,” he later added, “we are going to continue to be on the strike lines, we are going to continue to say ‘No’ to an unfair abuse of their power in trying to coerce us into accepting something that’s wrong. There comes a time when you have to stand up for what’s right, and that time is now.”
