The strike by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra) inconveniences a lot of people. It effectively shuts down production on hundreds of films and TV shows, which means that thousands of crew members will be out of work. The lack of stars willing to promote their work mean that the festival circuit is functionally kaput. Worst of all, it means that new original scripted content will soon dry up, and I will be forced to write about all sorts of worthless true crime documentaries. This, I’m sure you will agree, is the real tragedy here.
Nevertheless, as inconvenient as it may be, the strike feels vital for the future of the acting industry. As with the Writers Guild of America strike (when we learned that a writer for critical darling The Bear was paid so badly that it left him overdrawn and he had to work in an apartment with no heating after the studio refused to fly him to the writers’ room in Los Angeles), details are emerging about the difficulty of being a working television actor in the age of streaming.
This was underlined by a recent feature in the New Yorker, concerning the miserable compensation received by cast members on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. Kimiko Glenn, who played Brook Soso, posted a video to Instagram in which she opened a Sag-Aftra foreign-royalty statement and, despite starring on a huge, award-winning series that helped pave the way for the current glut of streaming originals, discovered she had been paid just $27.30 (about £21). Another cast member, Matt McGorry, replied to the post revealing that he had to keep his day job throughout filming, because he couldn’t support himself on his acting salary. A further star, Beth Dover, revealed that, after deducting travel expenses, she lost money on the show.
One of the issues here – and one that is driving the Sag negotiations – is the lack of residual rates (similar to TV royalties) offered by streaming services. Previously, a guest star on a series could expect a cut of the money whenever an episode was re-aired anywhere, and this could help sustain them through the leaner times that most actors experience. But streamers such as Netflix don’t re-air episodes because all their content is constantly available to be watched by anyone around the world whenever they want. So, as the New Yorker reports, Emma Myles can still make hundreds of dollars a year for a few spots on the traditionally broadcast Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, but only $20 a year for OITNB, which she worked on for six years.
This isn’t to say that OITNB is especially terrible either: as the strike begins to bite, more and more actors are revealing how hard streaming has made it for them to make a living. Kendrick Sampson, an actor who has spent the past half-decade working on shows including The Flash, Insecure and I’m a Virgo, recently wrote a Thread revealing that he received 50 residual cheques for his work over the past year, but they totalled just $86. Brandee Evans from P-Valley posted a TikTok of a residual cheque she received for exactly one cent. Kamil McFadden, an actor who has worked on I Think You Should Leave, KC Undercover and Millennials, tweeted a scrolling list of his recent residuals, many of which somehow detailed negative figures.
It is a lousy situation, and is not helped by the fact that many people think all television actors must be dripping with money. They have heard about the vast sums made by the cast of Friends, The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory, and assume that this level of opulence applies all the way down the line. Which isn’t the case at all. To qualify for Sag-Aftra health insurance, an actor is required to earn $26,470 from acting or residuals each year. It has been claimed that 75% to 90% of members are not able to reach this threshold. Even household names can fall foul of this; two years ago, Sharon Stone lost her union health coverage after earning $13 less than the minimum figure.
At the bottom end of the scale, a background performer will make the equivalent of £142 a day, for insecure, irregular work. But even that is being chipped away at. Sag claims that background artists are now having their likenesses scanned when they sign on for a project, with studios apparently reusing them in other work without consent or compensation.
Obviously, this points at a miserable present and a worse future, and is especially unfair when studio bosses are earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It is hard not to see this and want to support the strikes however you can. And if that means I have to sit through another miserable true crime documentary, it is a sacrifice worth making.
