Top execs join in as actors, studios resume talks
LOS ANGELES — Representatives of SAGAFTRA and the major Hollywood studios returned to the bargaining table Monday for the first time in two-and-a-half months to resolve thorny issues that prompted the actors’ walkout in mid-July.
The session marked the first time that top media executives — Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger, Netflix Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav and NBCUniversal Studio Group Chairman Donna Langley — sat down with the leaders of the 160,000-member performers union, which has been on strike against the entertainment companies since July 13.
The four executives came in as “closers” to help resolve the 148-day Writers Guild of America strike, which ended last week. Now, they are hoping to quickly bring labor peace and get the entertainment industry back to work.
The twin strikes — the first joint work stoppage by actors and the WGA since 1960 — have crippled scripted television and film production nationwide. The labor action has also caused a deep fatigue and financial strain for tens of thousands of Hollywood workers.
“We’re just tired,” actor Parvesh Cheena (”The Mandalorian,” “Sometimes I Think About Dying”) said Monday while picketing outside Amazon Studios in downtown Culver City. “We’ve been here every day since Day 1 of the writers’ strike in May and every day since the actors’ strike began on July 13. … But we’d rather be going back to work like everyone else.”
In a joint statement Monday evening, SAGAFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the major studios, said that after “concluding a full day bargaining session,” they would meet again on Wednesday.
Monday’s meeting came less than a week after the WGA ended its strike after reaching a tentative deal with the studio alliance on a new three-year film and TV contract. WGA leaders hailed their agreement as a big win because it included numerous gains, such as increases in minimum pay, a bonus for successful streaming shows and limits around the use of artificial intelligence.
WGA members began voting Monday and will continue through Oct. 9 on whether to ratify the deal.
Studio executives have suggested the proposed WGA contract could provide a framework to address many of the issues that prompted actors to join writers on picket lines.
But SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, most famous for her role as “The Nanny,” has sought to temper expectations that the union would rush to accept all of the provisions of the WGA contract, telling CNN last week that “one size doesn’t fit all.”
Chelsea Schwartz, a SAG-AFTRA strike captain who was helping coordinate Monday’s protest outside Amazon Studios, agreed.
“The WGA and SAGAFTRA are fighting for different things,” Schwartz said. “The WGA has some great points in their deal that will really help our negotiations, but we have a lot of other things that the companies haven’t even talked to us about in 81 days.”
Like the WGA, the union has argued that outdated contract terms, coupled with shorter seasons and longer hiatuses between seasons make it increasingly hard for many actors to maintain a middle-class lifestyle.
SAG-AFTRA, which represents background actors as well as dancers and recording artists, has a more diverse membership than the WGA. And the union also has distinct demands, such as ending the practice of having actors pay for their own self-recorded auditions.
Schwartz said that actors need better regulations around these self-recorded auditions, including longer turn-around times when they are required to memorize dozens of pages of a script.
The use of artificial intelligence to create background scenes and background actors is expected to be another major sticking point. Actors are worried that studios will reuse digital replicas to simulate background actors, squeezing out performers who have long filled background roles as a route to become working actors.
“The AI terms need to be way more robust” than what the WGA got, Schwartz said. “This is about our bodies, our faces and our voices.”