On Friday, July 14th, 2023 actors and actresses went on strike because of an ongoing labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers as co-stars were being paid significantly less and treated poorly.
The union is called the SAG-AFTRA which stands for American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Actors and actresses joined the Writers Guild of America better known as the WGA after they all decided to come together to ask for better pay due to co-stars with smaller roles being paid significantly less.
Job security is very minimal which is never good considering these people are very well known to the point where people will try their hardest to get into contact with them at any chance they get which adds to other problems they experience while filming TV shows, movies, documentaries, and commercials.
The strike is expected to last a long time which will continue to slow down production until this is over, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland a chief operating officer and general counsel from the Screen Actors Guild recently stated “he believes this strike will last up until the early months of 2024”, both SAG-AFTRA and WGA are planning to be on strike until they can see some type of change whether it be better pay or better working environments.
Many famous or well-known actors and actresses have joined their fellow co-stars in this strike for change. A few examples of this are Angela Bassett, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Camilla Luddington, and Kevin McKidd.
Everyone has come together in support and there have even been casts not walking the red carpet in protest, such as the recent movie Oppenheimer. The cast of Oppenheimer decided to leave the red carpet in solidarity with the thousands of people protesting for change. Many people found it odd but also interesting seeing them leave their movie red carpet to go and stand by fellow co-stars and friends in need of help as they were doing the strike against poor job culture and wrongful pay amounts.
As the strike has continued many actors & actresses have taken to social media as another way of getting the word out about these unfair working conditions and payments to the co-stars on TV shows, movies, documentaries, and commercials.
Throughout the duration of the strike, multiple productions have either had to be canceled or postponed till further notice. This strike has currently shut down over 70 productions in the U.S. alone and even abroad through something called picketing and the refusal of writing services, with this there has been a reduction in filming days.
Some examples of productions getting either postponed or canceled are films like The Summer I Turned Pretty (Season 3), Night Court, The Last Of Us (Season 2), and Stranger Things (Season 5). Many viewers of these 70-plus productions are very upset or even confused as to why they’ve been postponed or even canceled and the answer to that question is there needs to be changed before anything can continue.
In the 1950’s almost 73 years ago, the very first actors struck and in the year 1953, SWG was the first to secure a television residual, but this specific protest largely tapered into more strikes in the late 1980s. So as you can see there have been plenty of problems with the acting business that even now in 2023 almost 73 years ago they are still experiencing the same problems. There has to be some type of change in this industry and clearly, the higher-up people aren’t going to do anything to make the change.
