Frustrated actors are exposing the stark reality of their paychecks on social media as the SAG-AFTRA strikes stretch on. Jana Schmieding, known for her role in FX's Reservation Dogs, recently disclosed earning a mere $.03 for unlimited worldwide streams on FX, Hulu, and Disney.
While streaming giants like Disney rake in billions in profit—$21.82 billion in Q2 2023 alone—actors reveal they can receive as little as $0 for their appearances in these blockbuster movies and TV series streamed online.
Listen, I’m an actor. I don’t want a yacht. But I’d love to be able to save for retirement.
— jana (@janaunplgd) July 17, 2023
“Listen, I’m an actor. I don’t want a yacht,” Schmieding added. “But I’d love to be able to save for retirement.”
The Abbott Elementary actor William Stanford Davis revealed that he was paid the same grand total of three cents in May, in a video he posted on TikTok last week.
“I showed this to my brother, and he fell on the floor laughing,” he said as he held up his minuscule residual check. “It ain’t f---ing funny.”
Most recently, Robert Carradine, who played Hilary Duff's dad on the Disney Channel’s hit show, Lizzie Maguire, added his two cents, or rather 0 cents, on the issue of poor residual pay.
In an Instagram post on Friday, he shared a photo of a residual check from Disney Worldwide Services in the amount of $0.00. It was simply captioned: "Why we're striking."
Why are actors striking?
Carradine and his fellow SAG-AFTRA members—the actors union that represents some 160,000 actors and other performers—have been on strike for two weeks.
They join the Writers Guild of America members who began striking in May.
Both unions are demanding that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP, a trade association that bargains on behalf of studios, television networks, and streaming platforms, provide better pay.
What are residuals?
Residuals are payments made over the long term to actors and other theatrical workers when a TV show or movie is rerun or aired after its original release.
Previously, an actor could expect a cut of the money whenever an episode or film they featured in was re-aired anywhere.
However, as streaming services have exploded, actors have seen their residual checks become smaller.
The likes of Disney Plus technically don’t re-air episodes; all their content is available to be watched by anyone whenever they want.
For example, as the New Yorker reports, Emma Myles still makes around six hundred dollars a year for the four guest appearances she made on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit stretching back to 2004. But for her six-year recurring role as Leanne Taylor in Netflix’s Orange is the New Black series, she earns just $20 a year.
It’s why greater residual payments are one of the many ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike demands.
Don’t actors get paid big bucks up ,front?
Indeed actors are typically paid upfront for the movies and series that they appear in.
But there are often significant gaps between one job and the next, so residual paychecks offer a steady income stream—and as Kimiko Glenn, another Orange Is the New Black main cast member revealed, starring on a hugely popular show doesn't always translate into a substantial salary in the first instance.
“We did not get paid very well—ever,” Glenn said in a TikTok video. She was responding to comments questioning how much she was originally paid per episode of the Netflix show, after her TikTok video about the measly $27.30 she made in residuals went viral last month.
OITNB went on to become Netflix's most-watched original production, with 105 million users tuning into at least one episode of the show, but according to Glenn, workers were so underpaid that they had to take on blue-collar work on the side.
“People were bartenders still. People had their second jobs still,” Glenn revealed in the follow-up video. “They were f---ing famous as s---, like internationally famous, couldn’t go outside, but had to keep their second jobs because they couldn’t afford to not. We couldn’t afford cabs to set, you guys.”
Fortune has contacted Disney and Netflix for comment.
