actors start historic movement to get ‘fair wages’

The actors’ strike has started in the United States. The atmosphere is festive but everyone would prefer to be somewhere other than at the foot of the Netflix offices, parading under 30°C. Sam Morelos, for example, was to shoot season 2 of That ’90s Show for the platform. Instead, she, and all Hollywood actors, go on strike. “The strike, we don’t want to do itexplains Sam Morelos. We have to do it to be paid fair wages.”

>> Actors’ strike in Hollywood: which films and series are threatened by the movement?

They joined, on the picket lines at the entrance to the major studios, the screenwriters who themselves have stopped work since May 2. This is a major social conflict: the Sag-Aftra, the actors’ union, has 160,000 members. Hollywood is in fact at a standstill, the actors no longer filming anything and no longer even promoting projects that have already been filmed. According to them, the intransigence of the studios in the renegotiation of their collective agreement leaves them no choice.

Celebrities on the picket line

New technology has once again turned the Hollywood ecosystem upside down. With streaming, the number of episodes of a series has been halved. Residual earnings have plummeted, and studios say the model hasn’t broken even. Brad Greenquist, 40 years in the business, does not believe a word of it: “Every time a new technology comes along, the producers say ‘we don’t know if it’s going to work, let’s negotiate another deal in the meantime and if it works, you’ll be entitled to your share’. But in the following negotiations, they say they don’t want to discuss it again.”

“They hit us with VHS, then DVD, then Blu-Ray and now streaming. That’s enough! We gave in too often.”

Brad Greenquist, actor on strike

at franceinfo

Among the hundreds of protesters on the sidewalk, a few famous faces. Like that of Noah Wyle, Dr. Carter in the series Emergency room. “Everything on which our economic system was based has changedexplains the actor. Except our contracts! The studios want fringe changes on a totally different paradigm. And all we’re saying is they can’t do that.”

Noah Wyle has found success. Others find it more difficult to live from their passion. In times of strike, it is perhaps a force. “It seems that the studios want to drag us out to bring us to our kneessays Inessa Frantowski, comedian. But me, to survive in this industry, I always had three side jobs anyway.”

The previous strike, in 1980, lasted three months. The president of the actors’ union does not rule out the idea of ​​a conflict twice as long this year.