‘You really can’t make a living any more’: Hollywood actors join writers in strike

It’s been a hot, frustrating summer on the picket lines in Los Angeles, where film and TV writers have been striking for more than two months, no deal in sight.

But outside of the Netflix building on Sunset Boulevard on Thursday, the striking writers finally got some news they wanted to hear. “Sag is going on strike!” someone called, and the crowd of picketing writers roared their approval.

Related: Hollywood actors are going on strike. Here’s what that means

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra), whose 160,000 members include some of the most famous performers in the world, had officially announced its members would be joining Hollywood’s 11,500 writers on the picket lines outside Disney, Warner Bros, and other major film and TV studios.

But it’s Netflix, and fellow streaming disruptors like Amazon and Apple, that are at the heart of the growing labor disputes that have now brought the film industry to a virtual standstill.

Both writers and actors say that technological changes in the industry are forcing them to negotiate hard for major changes in their contracts. The new era of digital streaming has led to a dramatic decrease in how much money they make, they say. The rise of new artificial intelligence technologies is only adding to their concern.

“You really can’t make a living any more,” said actor Felicia Day, who has been working in the industry for more than two decades. Day, who showed up at the Sag-Aftra headquarters for the official announcement of the strike on this sweltering Thursday, said she gets bigger checks for television residuals for roles she played back in 2004 than she does for much more recent performances. “People are having a harder and harder time just supporting themselves and staying in the industry,” she said.

As pay for individual roles declines, Day said, actors have to secure twice as much work just to make rent – even though auditioning for and obtaining roles has not become any easier. A few years ago, four to five guest star roles on television shows would be enough to get an actor through a year, she said. Now, it takes double that number of roles to make the same amount of money: “It’s a constant hustle and it’s very demoralizing,” she said.

Hollywood’s striking writers have made similar arguments, pointing to television writing contracts that have become shorter and more precarious, a development they argue is increasingly turning writers into gig workers.

Inside Sag-Aftra’s headquarters, union president Fran Drescher made it clear that actors were fed up and fired up, saying, “We are the victims,” and telling studio executives: “You’re sitting on the wrong side of history.”

The star of The Nanny, a sitcom from the 1990s about a wealthy Broadway producer whose family is rescued by a straight-talking woman from Queens, Drescher is now being hailed as a labor hero for her blunt denunciations of studio executives.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had released a statement ahead of the formal strike announcement blaming the actors’ union for the breakdown of negotiations, saying it had offered actors “historic pay and residual increases” and that the union’s refusal would lead to widespread economic suffering among its members.

“There’s a level of expectation that they have, that is just not realistic,” Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC in an interview on Thursday, speaking of both writers and actors. “And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”

Some industry analysts have argued that the transition to digital streaming has left Hollywood as a whole in a shaky financial situation. “The studios are in crisis,” Kim Masters, the editor-at-large for The Hollywood Reporter, told NPR in advance of the strike. “Streaming has really hurt them. They haven’t figured out how to make money on it except Netflix, finally, after a lot of investment.”

But during a week in which anonymous studio sources told Deadline that their plan for the writers’ strike was to delay further negotiations until the fall, when they thought writers would be out of money and at risk of losing their homes and apartments, many Hollywood workers don’t have much sympathy for the financial struggles of the studios. Iger’s reported compensation at Disney is $27m per year for two years. His predecessor, Bob Chapek, was forced out but reportedly received a $20m severance deal.

Drescher, the Sag-Aftra president, did not dispute that a prolonged, dual strike by Hollywood’s actors and writers would lead to economic hardship for the workers on strike and many other Angelenos affected by the fallout of halted productions, studio cutbacks and belt-tightening by tens of thousands of workers on strike.

“Our hearts bleed that we had to make this decision, but we can’t not get what these members deserve, because it’s only going to get worse,” Drescher said. “We were forced into it.”

Outside Sag-Aftra headquarters, Danny Hogan, an actor who lives in New Jersey, said he had flown to Los Angeles to be on the ground during a historic moment.

“Since 1960, WGA and Sag have not been united like this,” Hogan said. “We are at a crisis point. Most actors want to have this as their full-time work. It seems like studios are forcing people to do this as a hobby more than a job.”

With artificial intelligence, he added, “Are you going to take my image and my voice, replicate that, and then I’m expendable?”

After trying to build a career for 17 years, Hogan said, he’s finally been seeing momentum in his career, with recent roles in several Lifetime movies and on NCIS: Hawaii. The strike will halt that momentum, he said, but he still voted to support it: “It’s an unfortunate necessity.”

It’s “our job, as actors, to be focused and present”, Hogan said, and for now, he sees that job not on a set, but on the picket line.