Fran Drescher says actors guild ready for a long strike: 'I felt pumped'

LOS ANGELES − No one knows exactly how long the actors union will strike, but its president, Fran Drescher, says they are looking to the long game.

"Right now, we discussed what it would cost if it went for six months, so we're looking for the long haul," says Drescher, the SAG-AFTRA president and star of the hit '90s sitcom "The Nanny" "The gravity of a commitment like this is not lost on any of us. It's major. But we also see that we have no future and no livelihood unless we take this action, unfortunately."

While on strike, members will go without much work and pay they would have gotten otherwise.

Drescher said over 90% of the union voted to authorize the strike, and told USA TODAY that actors are prepared to make personal sacrifices for a greater good.

At a heated press conference at the union's office in Los Angeles Thursday afternoon, she gave an impassioned speech announcing the actors union's decision to strike starting Friday, following a stalemate in negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), an organization representing major studios and streamers.

During the conference, Drescher raised her voice while expressing the union's concerns to a room full of reporters and cameras and delivered lines that, she reveals to USA TODAY, strayed from the script she was given.

"There's always something written by communications when you are the president of the union," Dresser says hours after the conference. "I very rarely refer to it, because I feel like what I bring to the party is authentic-ness and sincerity, and that's what I always want to bring to the public in my messaging, so that they can feel what this is about and why it's so important, not just for us, but for workers everywhere. So I felt pumped in my ability to express it all, coming from my heart more than my head."

The issues on the table, she says, include both actors' salaries in an industry where norms have been upended in recent years by streaming as well as the potential use of artificial intelligence to replace actors' labor. The SAG-AFTRA strike, combined with the ongoing writers or WGA strike, creates a work stoppage expected to bring most movie and television production worldwide to a halt.

The AMPTP responded to SAG-AFTRA's decision to strike in a press release Thursday.

"AMPTP member companies entered the negotiations with SAG-AFTRA with the goal of forging a new, mutually beneficial contract," the organization said. "The AMPTP presented a deal that offered historic pay and residual increases, substantially higher caps on pension and health contributions, audition protections, shortened series option periods, and a groundbreaking AI proposal. A strike is certainly not the outcome we hoped for as studios cannot operate without the performers that bring our TV shows and films to life."

In her speech, Drescher called the AMPTP "a very greedy entity" that is "systematically trying to figure out ways to carve us out of what is due us."

She tells USA TODAY the reasons for SAG-AFTRA's strike impact all workers, particularly the threat of AI replacing human employees.

"The eyes of labor are upon us," she says. "It's very important that everybody appreciate that we're not just sticking up for ourselves, but we're sticking up for everybody else, because it is a slippery slope into a very dangerous time, and a real dystopia if big business, corporations, think that they can put human beings out of work and replace them with artificial intelligence. It's dangerous, and it's without thinking or conscience or caring."

Hollywood actors on strike: 'This is a moment of history,' says SAG chief Fran Drescher

She adds: "They (the AMPTP) know what we would need, and they have to have the guts to go to their board member and say, 'We're partners with these people. We have to cut them a deal. We can't keep trying to squeeze them out of their livelihood. It's the wrong approach.' And, unfortunately, power concedes nothing without demand. It never has, and it never will."

Drescher hopes the AMPTP will reconsider their stance and meet SAG-AFTRA's requests.

"I hope that the AMPTP thinks better of their stonewalling us, and we'll meet them any time, any day," she says. "The ball is in their court."

More: Matt Damon, Jamie Lee Curtis, more stars share their thoughts on the actors strike

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fran Drescher says SAG-AFTRA is looking to 'long haul' with strike