Brian Cox, Imelda Staunton, Naomie Harris and Simon Pegg were among the British A-list actors leading a demonstration in Leicester Square on Friday in solidarity with the US strikes disrupting the film and television industries.
The actor representing their union, Equity, gathered in the shadow of large cinema billboards advertising the Barbie and Oppenheimer movies. Placards being waved included: “Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well”, “Support artists not algorithms” and “This Barbie’s last residual was $0.02”.
Other high-profile stars in attendance included Rob Delaney, David Oyelowo, Andy Serkis, Rakie Ayola, Penelope Wilton and Jim Carter. A second Equity rally was simultaneously held at Manchester’s Media City.
The walkouts were called last week by Sag-Aftra, Equity’s sister union in the US, and focus on residuals – the payments that performers receive for repeat showings of films or TV shows – as well as issues over actors’ likenesses being reproduced by artificial intelligence.
Addressing the rally, Cox, the star of the hit series Succession, said: “We are at the thin end of a really horrible wedge.” He stressed that things were harder in the US due to the lack of a national health service. “What is important to Sag actors is health and they need that. That’s why they need their residuals,” he added.
The actor said the challenges posed by AI were the “worst aspect” of the dispute. Cox told how a fellow actor was recently told by a studio in “no uncertain terms that they would keep his image and do what the fuck they want with it”.
“That is a completely unacceptable position and is a position we should be fighting against,” he added.
Cox said he had recently worked on a programme where he was given a list of things an AI version of him would say, including animal impersonations. “I’ve never done a fucking animal impersonation in my life,” he said. “This is going to happen to everybody. Nobody’s exempt.”
The joint action between Sag-Aftra and the Writers Guild of America has brought film and television production to a standstill. Hollywood has not seen anything like it for more than 60 years, with stars including Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Jennifer Lawrence, Joaquin Phoenix and Jamie Lee Curtis backing the strike.
While the strike is only in the US, many Equity members in the UK also hold Sag-Aftra cards and will be reluctant to work. Those who are not Sag-Aftra members will feel uncomfortable if there is any sense they are taking work from striking colleagues. Many productions in the UK are also co-productions, while the biggest British studios host major US films, all of which are now on hold.
The Catastrophe star Delaney told Friday’s rally: “We are going to win because we always win these strikes … We’re going to get our tiny little slice of the pie, the pie that we made up the friggin’ recipe for.”
To enthusiastic cheers, he compared the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the industry trade association, to “silly little toddlers”.
“They’re on earnings calls and talk about the subscriber numbers and the blockbuster numbers. Then we ask for a nickel and they’re like, ‘No, no, we don’t have any. Well, which is true? We know which one is true,” he added.
Ayola, who portrayed Hermione Granger in the West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, took aim at the streaming services turning huge profits while many actors struggled to make ends meet. “Where do you think those millions of pounds and dollars you are paying [to streaming services] every month are going?”
The Equity union, which represents 47,000 members, has been clear it will “stand in unwavering solidarity” with Sag-Aftra and has condemned the UK’s strict anti-strike legislation, which prevents its members from striking in solidarity. It has also advised its members to continue to work if they are under Equity contracts.
The Equity general secretary, Paul W Fleming, told the Guardian the union did not want contracts being altered to take work away from US actors, or work around the strike action. “We are policing that.”
He added: “We are also policing productions which are refusing to allow Sag-Aftra members to work on their contract, which is illegal in this country. And it’s perfectly possible for Sag-Aftra members to audition and apply for work on Equity agreements – subject to the approval of Sag-Aftra.”
Such contracts would only be approved, he said, if the terms and conditions matched those that Sag-Aftra were demanding in the US.
Equity will be going into negotiations next year, and Fleming said there were similar concerns in the UK over pay and AI issues. He said 95% of British film and TV was made on a union agreement, while 84% of actors in the UK were members of Equity.
“So anything that happens in the US, we thoroughly expect to happen here in a British context. In the US, one of the big sticky issues is pay, and they have had a fraction of the inflation that we’ve had in the past few years.”
