The Playbook

This is the most traumatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast. Chris Harrison and Lauren Zema coming to you from the home office in Austin, Texas. But all eyes these days are pointed out west to Hollywood and the sag Aftra union strike that has crippled and shut down Hollywood. This is much publicized, been talked about quite a bit, and the reason we are opening up the playbook for this special episode of the most dramatic podcast ever is some of you reached out to us and said, hey, can

Well, thank you.

That makes me feel like I'm like doing a little journalism again. It's been a minute for.

Me taking a break. Is that what I do? God, Babe, I thought I made you last.

Well, you do a lot of things really well, and full disclosure, this is something near and dear to our hearts. Laura and I are both card carrying members of the SAG After a.

Guilt, Yes, And look, the part of the reason we wanted to do this is because, look, when I watch CNBC, I'm confused. I don't know what's going on in the stock market, Like I don't understand the world of finance. If a doctor tries to explain something to me, I say, can you give it to me in layman's terms. So we all have our own fields and industries, but this strike is historic. I'll explain why it's making national and

Oh for sure, in huge.

Part because and we'll get into it, but one of the major issues here is AI artificial intelligence and how it could potentially take jobs.

So we're going to get into it all.

I also want to point out you said, look, we are SAG After members, but specifically what the union is striking about right now is a certain type of contract. Like some people have wondered, you know, how this will affect the TV and movies they see.

It will affect network's fall shows.

You know, the writer's guild is on strike as well, and you're not going to see some of those maybe new TV shows in the fall. Things like Euphoria is probably delayed, huge show for HBO, probably delayed well into twenty twenty six by now, because the writers are on strike. They can't write it. Now, the actors are on strike, they can't act in it. But because of the specific contract that's being struck striked over, reality shows, for example,

Reality shows can still happen this way.

I think Love Island is in production right now, it's okay to move forward. That deal I think has another year for variety slash reality.

Shows and that'll come up.

So there's specific contracts because our union does encompass so many people. Sag after is radio hosts and TV and actors and actresses and background actors and commercial actors and movie stars.

So it's a lot of people now here. It is simple terms.

Breaking it down, I would say there's three major things that we're striking over. One residuals. Two just our wages period and three AI. I'm going to start with residuals because part of the reason this is historic is do you know the last time that sag After Babe and the Writer's Guild, the Writer's Guild have been striking about two months and so now it's a huge deal that sag After has joined and is also striking. Do you know the last time we went on strike together?

It was a while ago before I was born.

Since I think nineteen sixty three, the sixties.

Okay, that was by the way, I'm old, but yeah, I'm not that old.

Back then, a guy named Ronald Reagan was the president of sag AF getting it done for us.

Ronnie.

Another great orator is we're going to talk about fran Dresher, the current president, who is really on point and really emotional and passionate and fantastic.

If you haven't, I would go watch her entire speech. We'll play a clip of it later.

But Franny the Nanny, that's my president. Yes, the president of the sag After Screen Actors Guild Union is fran Dresher, known as the Nanny, and she even referenced the Nanny and her speech announcing the strike.

So number one residuals.

Back in the sixties, we both unions went on strike in large part for something called residuals. Now, what a residual means basically is like at that time, we were getting frustrated because networks and studios were selling and reselling TV shows and movies and they were continuing to make money. Like picture that a TV show goes into reruns.

You had Gunsmoke on at the time. Yeah, Gunsmoke was the most popular show in the world, I think definitely in the United States, probably the world, and you could just air that over and over and the cowboys would only get paid that.

One time, right, So you know, think about how many times shows like when I was younger on Nick at Night, I watched Laverne and Shirley that was still in black, that was in black and white. That show was decades old already at that point, but Nick at Knights airing and over and over again with commercials making money. So actors said, hey, if you're going to reuse our work, we should get a little portion of that money. A thing called a residual. Do you get residuals checks for anything I do?

Yeah, for Bachelor bachelorette. Still who wants to be a millionaire? A bunch I did a bunch of movies back in the day. Still get little checks for that. And it's funny. Sometimes you get like a fourteen cent check. Seriously, and I think to myself, it cost more to mail me this fourteen cent check. Their needs. We'll get to that and the other negotiation of all they just if it's under a dollar, just keep it and put it in a big pool for I don't know, a lottery or something.

I mean, it's probably not worth the people's printed on.

But I do get residuals, and they are important.

Well, back then we fought for residuals on the networks. Now streaming the streamers have changed everything. Obviously, I'm talking about Netflix and Who.

And all that.

And the thing is many networks have created their own streamers, right, NBC now has Peacock. So the business model has changed now. I think I could be wrong, but I think Hulu is or has at some point aired old seasons of The Bachelor. Yeah, have you gotten residuals checks for that?

I don't think specifically I have. I would get it when Hulu bought it, say say they bought it for one hundred dollars. I would get a little small portion of that, Okay, but I think what you're alluding to is what happens when that is aired a million times exactly.

Actually, one of the stars, Sean Gunn, who played Kirk on Gilmour Girls, Okay, one of our faves.

You and I have watched Taylor.

Yes, So he was on the picket line and he said, look, Gilmore Girls. Netflix bought the rights to air Gilmore Girls to have it on Netflix. He said, it's probably one of their top shows. And think about that. The streamers don't release their data, so when a TV shows and reruns, you could know, oh hey, I know exactly how many times it might the show I was on re ran and I'm going to get a check for every time it was aired and every time that network made money from.

Commercials on it.

But the streamers don't release their data, so Gilmore Girls could be I mean, new generations have discovered Gilmore Girls on Netflix, binge watching it. It's probably watched over and over and over and over again. But Sean Gunn, the actor who played Kirk, all these people are watching him, but he's not seeing any of that, and the streamers won't tell you how many times people are watching, and.

They are very protective of those numbers and those metrics, and you have no idea. And when it was ABC, NBCCBS, Fox and you know cable, we all use the same.

System, Nielsen ratings.

Everyone uses Nielsen. So you know, okay, our show did a point eight, it did three million viewers. What have you know exactly what you're doing. You know, we can argue if those Nielsen numbers are correct or not, but they at least use the same metric. Nobody has any idea what's going on at Amazon, Netflix and the line.

So when it comes to this, it's like in the sixties we fought for residuals.

Now we're fighting for it again.

But because streaming has changed everything, and the union representatives for sag AFTRA have made this point many times. You've changed the entire model of our business. You got to change our contract that goes with it. You can't sit here and say that like everything's different, but you want us to operate in an old way.

And I completely agree with that.

And look, I think one good point is I've seen some people in the comments on social media be like Oh, okay, Hollywood.

Look, here's the thing.

There's one hundred and sixty thousand members of Sagaftra. Most of those people are not the Angelina Jolie's and the Jennifer Lall.

That's the thing. We have to kind of making millions. Yeah, you think Brad Pitt, George Clooney as soon as we say Hollywood, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence making twenty million dollars in her last film. No, like, that's the point. Oh oh one percent. You're not seeing ninety nine percent of that iceberg that is underwater, which is a bunch of people grinding it out, just making rent, just like everybody else in the world. They just love what they do and they've chosen this profession.

Right, background actors, commercial actors.

And just bit part actors.

I mean yeah, And then look, it's a difficult job. There's a lot of rejection.

And part of the reason we have to have a union and be protective is it's an inconsistent job. It's not a nine to five you can work and being like a great you know movie. Literally, you could be in a star in a movie one year and then not work again for two or three years. So I think the residuals thing is really important. And basically, you know, these dreamers don't want it to They don't want to tell you how much your work is being used. Like think about that. It's kind of crazy when you think

To get paid for that.

So from residuals to point number two, which is wages, simple living wages. On that note, this is pretty short and sweet. What the union representatives are saying is that. And keep in mind, you guys, the unions tried to negotiate with They tried to negotiate with the Let me get this n acronym right, the AMPTM.

Oh, I'm not going to get it right. Help me, babe.

Yes, it is the AMPTP, which is the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers. That is who essentially seg After is striking against.

Because we've been negotiating with them.

Should point out the unions had been trying to negotiate with them on a new contract for weeks on weeks, if not months. We were actually supposed to negotiate our contract before COVID hit, if you remember. And then COVID hit and we said, okay, look, we'll allow a pause on this. It's a wild time, it's unprecedented. We don't know what's happen, so we'll delay. Well, then COVID change the industry even more, right, like people aren't going to the movies as much, so all the more reason to

He put it that simply.

He said, no, we would not agree that we would agree to a wage that in the future our union members we're going to be making more money than they are now. We wanted them to factor in a little thing called inflation. So just basic labor.

Yeah, desires.

But it's this third point that I think is really at the crux of this and really at the middle, and I have to. Can I introduce it please? It's AI. Artificial intelligence is really a big part of this negotiation and strike, and you broke this down very eloquently when we were.

Talking about it, well really, I almost.

I was paraphrasing what our chief negotiator, Duncan said. Let's play a little piece from the press conference where he and the other negotiating team announced that we'd be striking.

Here's what he said.

That the that the studios and networks potentially want to do in the future with artificial intelligence and actors.

They proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day's pay, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want, with no consent and no compensation.

So there you go.

I thought he explained it perfectly, and I got to give a shout out to him and to fran Dresher. They killed it in that press conference. They have broken things down in such clear terms for people to understand.

And how scary is that.

I went into that. I listened to that press conference with you, and I thought Okay, look, I would like to be open minded and see both sides of this situation. And I thought, in the coming days, I want to hear how the Alliance Motion Picture and Television kind of rebut this whole thing. What is their take on it? They have not, like no one's denied anything that they have said from this press conference that all of this was what was trying to be kind of forced down

Thought, maybe there's a miscommunication.

Well maybe they're maybe they're Yeah, maybe they're trying to exaggerate a little bit to make our case seem a little stronger. You know, it's what you would do.

No, I actually it's not a podcast Duncan did. He did our friend Matt Bellan's podcast The Town, and he doubled down on that because Matt asked him about it and he said, no, no, no, I was like quoting a document there. They want to scan an actor, pay that actor for a day's work, and then use that actor in perpetuity as art via artificial intelligence. So if that doesn't scare everybody at home, I don't know what does that scares me? That scares me, not just as

And think about that.

They're saying they want to use your likeness in perpetuity, So they're really what they're saying is potentially just eliminating the job of the background actor. They're only going to have artificial intelligence playing background actors in every movie.

And that and that's enough, by the way, that's enough to be scary, and that's enough to fight for. But I see that going any even further. And just just for reference. Background acting that day work is vital to the economy of Hollywood and to so many people getting their start in this business. Getting your hours up, getting your numbers up, being a part of the union, sometimes leading to a speaking part that can change your life

I will say the union is not saying. The union is actually not saying you can't use AI at all. The sag after isn't saying that. But they're saying, we can't allow you to pay someone for a day and then you own their likeness and perpetuity.

That is wild.

Like, look, I'm sure they've cgid big crowds of people at this point. That's not that different than artificial intelligence. If you think about, like how much CGI is done in movies. Now, I'm not saying you got to you know, pay a million background actors, but you can't own someone's likenesses.

You can't use you, and you can't use me, and you can't use my Yeah, you can't use my expression, my likeness. That's that's very different. And am Gary, what's scarier is when you come in. I forget the actress that came out and said, oh yeah, they they scanned our likeness and face when we came in, and our expressions, and you can use that. You could use that for an entire new show, you could use it for a movie. I mean, think of this. This is on a crazy

And by the way, I think that's very real.

I mean, you've heard the recording New Beatles Music using AI to recreate John Lennon's voice.

Yeah.

Now, I think what our union is saying is we know that's coming. We're not rejecting the.

Future, we're embracing it.

Actually, but you have to.

Pay people for their skills, for their talents for them and I you know, and if you look at it from the writer's perspective, the Writer's Guild is actually being a little more intense about it. They say, we want to promise in our contract that AI is not going to write scripts because like, one thing I didn't realize was, for example, there's no like copyright law on AI right now, or at least very little right So what a studio could say is, like all movie, if you've seen a movie,

You could bring in maybe a writer or two to punch it up and make it worthy for the network.

And so there's copyright issues there, and also from the writer's perspective, I mean, they could just and I worry, like for just the quality of I mean, I think about think about how much we quote movie lines or we quote TV shows, and how a TV show or a movie emotionally connected you. I mean, I mentioned Bride, which as your soul. I still quote Bride's Maid's probably once a week. I'll be like, there's something, there's someone on the wings, she's churning butter on the wing or ready to party.

So I quote that movie all the time.

I'm sure Studio intend to have AI straight up just write scripts, even if you're not trying to do it in the style of someone They're gonna want AI to just write scripts. And I can't even think of the quality that we're going to start to get. We're going to become dumber as a society, I think, and really living like I don't want to I'm not trying to reject the future, but I don't want to live in a world that's lacking the human experience.

I think the biggest point out of this to go back to the actual strike that you hit the nail on the head for and Dresser, the president of the union as well as the chief negotiator, said, the union is encouraging AI. They believe in AI. They know that that's where the future lies. It just can't be unfettered and unchecked. We need some checks and balances, we need

Right. You're seeing this, and this is why I bring it up because again we're seeing this across industries right. I mean, just in May of this year, it was the headline everywhere that like three hundred and fifty of the top experts on AI published a letter warning that they think AI is potentially what you said at Pandora's Box and could quote poseate an extinction to humans. When are we going to set up and take this seriously?

Okay, So those are kind of the three pillars of what everybody's fighting for.

And I want to point out we are striking because we couldn't I mean, per our union. They tried, and the studios and the networks just wouldn't give on things. And you got to meet in the middles at some point, or if you don't, that's how a strike.

And the studios walked away, and that's what caused this resk.

You you've been in this business longer than me, you know not since you weren't born in the sixties, but.

I remember working with John Wayne.

Did do you ever do anything with Reagan? You and Reagan hitting it up together?

What do you think knowing you know some of these big wigs and stuff like that. Oh well, and I should point out a huge part of the reason people are frustrated. I'm sorry for backtracking, but just the amounts of money. I mean, you and I have dealt with this every time go to negotiate, and everybody deals with this at work. But for your job, for your contract, you're told, you know, money's tight right now, gosh, COVID

Hundreds No, no, hundreds of millions.

I'm not good at math.

Yeah, these CEOs are making hundreds of millions of dollars.

And so I think the unions are frustrated because they're like, our people can't make a living wage. And you've got one person in your company, and if you could just rearrange some of the money, reallocating be a little bit, it would.

Be a rounding error on your tax return. To fix this problem.

One hundred percent.

I mean, I think about Amazon, and I'd look no hate to the people who work at Amazon, but they made that show is the most expensive show ever, the Lord of the Rings show. That show costs like four hundred and fifty million dollars or something, and who really wanted You.

Might as well have just burned it at the bottom of a canyon.

If you took that four hundred and fifty million and paid the writer's better.

Some of their hit shows like Jury Duty was a big hit for Amazon.

I mean, just realitate, just be a bit smarter about how you're spending your money.

So we are in right now, we are at an impasse.

And I was going to ask you, knowing these CEOs and such, what do you think could happen from here?

Well, that's that's That's what I was going to get to with you of where we are and all this there are, And again this is I mean, you're you're basically betting on a coin flip here. Is this going to go longer? Yes? I mean my guess is the the studio will back away and use the cover of summer, which is the doldrums of production.

Anyway, there's usually not new TV shows.

Yeah, Network, you're not in production, you're not really doing much so and there's no new TV shows, so you're not going to really notice anything. So let's just let this go a little bit longer, maybe into September October when everybody has to re engage, because that's when we're going to start feeling the heat. And I say we television viewers, people that want to see their shows will start feeling this. But I think we're going to get a couple of months of let's just see how this goes.

Well, we've seen Speak you know, we love drama here at the most dramatic podcast ever. This is also bringing some big time like Hollywood Insider drama. There was an article in Deadline, which is just an industry news publication, and they quoted an executive anonymously, not on the record, but this person said that the goal of the amp mother, what is it, the AMPTM, the alliance, Oh.

God of the alliance. That sounds that makes it sound like a Star.

Wars stars the Alliance. We're against the Alliance.

They quoted an executive who said that they their goal was to hold out and to make the writers suffer so much that they would become homeless.

A really silly thing to say. And I know the Bob Eiger interview from Sun Valley was not a great look either.

He was even the interview from sun Valley, Idaho against the Mountains, talking about how their lowly writers aren't being reasonable.

So yeah, it hasn't been a good look. And so far the Alliance has not done a good job of getting their ducks in a row. And that's what's difficult about this is it's not just this small group, as you said anymore. There are so many massive industries. When you're dealing with Amazon, Apple, Netflix.

Andy is with different motives in different financial situations. NBC, even though they have a streamer in Peacock, they're in a very different financial model than Apple.

Apple makes their money from iPhones.

Amazon wants you to buy underwear and Clorox.

Apple could sit with this strike forever because they're beyond cash positive for iPhones. Their main product is not TV shows and movies. They have different priorities, and I think that's going to create drama and infighting within the Alliance because I think they're going to get to the point where the networks are like, we need new TV shows and Apple's like, oh, we don't really care.

And I think there is already that in fighting. I think there were people that were very unhappy that that one quote about people being hauled.

Yes the problem.

Apparently there were allegedly reportedly phone calls back and forth who said this, this isn't how we're supposed to be presenting ourselves. But here's one thing I don't think that the Alliance was prepared for.

We need music done.

They were not.

You know what the music we need is the Nanny theme song. They were not prepared for. Fran our Union president Fran Dresher. Listen to just a snippet of the speech that she gave after hours of negotiating.

The woman is exhausted.

And here is the fiery speech she gave at the press conference announcing the strike.

How they plead comedy that they're losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their ceohs, it is disgusting shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment. You cannot change the business model as much as it has changed and not expect the contract to change too. We're not going to keep doing incremental changes on a contract that no longer honors.

What is happening right.

Now with this business model that was foisted upon us. What are we doing moving around furniture on the Titanic?

It's crazy.

So the jig is up, AMPTP.

We stand tall.

You have to wake up and smell the coffee. We are labor and we stand tall.

She killed it.

And I don't think what the studios realized is like, that's somebody people know. You know, our president isn't someone you've never heard of. And I will say it's different. No shade to the Writer's Guild, but they're they're eleven thousand people, SAG afters one hundred and sixty thousand people and some very recognizable faces.

And look, I know the nanny.

I care about the nanny, and I think people are gonna listen and sit up and pay attention. And I would definitely listen to the Nanny before I'd listened to this studio executive who makes hundreds of millions sitting on their private jet.

Well, one of the things that you can't do when you are in this strike and a part of this union, is you can't go out and promote your work. You can't promote your movie. So this dropped, This news dropped when they were doing the premiere of Oppenheimer in London and the actors walked off the red carpet. They left, And so you will start to feel this your late night shows when you see your favorite actors and actresses. They're not gonna be on. They can't come on and

Well, and what that might mean is they're taking too Instagram and hopefully the picket lines and talking about the issues in a way that people understand and will listen. And you know, I say, a fran Dresser, that's my president. I really I love her. I think she's very relatable, and I think she made all this really easy to understand, and I hope we've made it easy to understand today.

Fran we want you on that wall. We need you on that wall. See plagiarizing a great movie again.

I think that this is going to potentially set precedent for lots of industries, especially like I said on the AI thing, and certainly everybody understands right now inflation, how hard it is to make a living today, and that you know, we're fighting for our future.

That's really I agree with.

I hate that striking, and Franz said this, Look, we don't want to be striking because we don't want people to be out to work. We don't want to negatively affect the economy of Hollywood and many places abroad. But we have to fight for our future because otherwise it's

I hope this helped. I hope you understand a little bit more of why this is going on and maybe what's to come. And we'll follow this and if you know, we'd love to hear your comments, leave them in the comment section below or shoot us a DM at the Most Dramatic Pod Ever. But thank you so much, and Elsie, thank you for doing this.

Hey, thank you Fran for doing this.

Thank you Fran, and I hope you enjoyed us opening up the playbook once again. We'll talk to you next time because we have a lot more to talk about. Thanks for at Follow us on Instagram at the Most Dramatic Pod Ever and make sure to write us a review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you next time.