Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok app Daily with
Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Long Island Bunker. Folks, this has been an extraordinary year for workers' rights, for labor organizing, for recognizing that the people right then ninety nine percent are not being paid their just dues, are not essentially being reimbursed for their labor, energy, work, all of these things, and in recognizing this right it began this kind of movement over the last year began with the strike in Hollywood, with the actors and the writers
uniting and deciding to hold over one hundred and eighteen days in terms of the Actors' union to strike. Right as we are seeing AI being developed to replace human creativity and talent, as we are seeing just how greedy the heads of these networks and streaming services are, that people have been cut out. The people have just been cut out of their opportunity to be able to earn not just a decent living. Because I think, folks, that it's important for us to recognize that language is important.
We don't want just a decent living, a decent life, We want a good life and a good living, one that we see value and dignity right in the work that we do, and we receive the respect and dignity
and compensation for the work that we are doing. That it isn't you know what we've seen and what we've had the opportunity to really unpack over the last couple of years, those of us that were privileged to be inside during the height of the COVID nineteen pandemic and recognize that the ways that we have been socialized to work right don't make sense. But living hand to mouth
and paycheck to paycheck has just been the way. And what these strikes have informed for us is that greed has no bounds, has no bottoms, and left unchecked, will
just eat us all alive. So in today's conversation, I was so happy to be able to get the multi hyphen it talented writer, director, comedian, author Francesca Ramsey to join Woke af again, and as we were preparing for this interview, it seemed and now we know for certain that the deal was struck with the Actors' Union to be able to after one hundred and eighteen days, get back to work and doing so with a thriving wage right and a deal that makes sense for the next
three years. That also builds in right ideas about the future and the future use of AI in Hollywood. And this conversation was just so rich in terms of really understanding, and I think that a lot of us recognize that what we see in terms of the glitz and the glam and the red carpets and the uber wealth that surrounds some actors and writers in Hollywood is not the
fucking norm. That most people, the majority that actually help this machine known as Hollywood run, make very little money, hold down multiple jobs in order to be able to put food on the table and pursue their passions. That just because you enjoy what it is that you do doesn't make it not work and doesn't mean that you
shouldn't be compensated for it. But I think that a lot of us came to really understand what it means to work in this industry that, let us be very clear, probably wouldn't have been able to get through the pandemic without the ability to, you know, lose ourselves in content creation of other peoples, lose ourself in imaginary worlds, to be able to deal with what was happening outside of
our doors. Without those streaming giants, right, but recognizing that the people that created that content weren't being compensated while we were streaming, you know, millions of hours. So I really love this conversation with Francesca Ramsey because it puts into context a lot of what we don't know and a lot of the reasons why things are left to be murky, and the clarification and the strategies that were used in order to get these actors and the writers
the deals that they deserve. So that conversation with Francesca Ramsey is coming up next, folks. I am so very excited to welcome to WOKF Daily Francesco Ramsey, who is a comedian, a writer, a content creator, an activist, YouTube star, and author of the book Well That Escalated Quickly Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental activist to come to WOKAF I am just like beyond one. But also I have been following your social media since the strike began.
I know, and now here we are, and here we are eighteen days of the actor's strike, which is pretty wild.
And this is historic in the length. It is historic in the unification between the writers and the actors' unions. To come together. Just give us. You know, I feel like what I learned, and I want you to be able to explain it to the listeners what I learned during this time. It kind of broke open this bubble concept of what it means to work in Hollywood, right, and this assumption that everybody is making a brain and everybody has you know, bookoo dollars and all is good
over there. So why do we care about these folks not getting their fair shape when they get seemingly everything red carpets, the glitz, the glam. So just talk to us about these one hundred plus days and the reason to enter into this strike, and why folks stood strong, why you stood strong for so long.
Well, thank you for that incredible introduction. You know, I will call myself out and say that I also naively thought I would be making bookou dollars. Otherwise I would have been using my graphic design degree. I could have a corporate job with regular health insurance there. But you know, I wanted to chase my dreams. And I think a lot of us, whether you are a writer or you are an actor, we got into this industry for the love of it. Of course, having money is a benefit
to any career that you're in. But the reality is we have created an industry that over time has become unsustainable, largely due to streaming. The model that was created with network television and residuals, which are essentially like commission payments, where if you appear in a program or you've written an episode of television, you share in the profits when that show is successful because of advertising. But the streaming model, because you don't have ads on streaming, has really changed
the game for writers and actors. And we knew that a potential strike was eminent. Our contract with the studios comes up for renegotiation every three years, and the last time that we would have been negotiating with twenty twenty and as we remember, the pandemic, which is still here, it hasn't gone away, was new, and everything shut down in order to keep folks safe, and so we did not have the leverage that we needed in order to strike.
So then cut to twenty twenty three, and ahead of the writer's contract ending in May and the actors contract ending in June, we were hoping that we could come to an agreement with the studios. Nobody wanted to strike. I would have loved to have worked all year. I didn't work most of the year, So there were just so many things on the table that we knew that needed to be solidified in order to secure the future of our industry, especially regarding residuals and protections with AI.
And while we don't have all the details of the actors agreement, I'm really confident because we held out for one hundred and eighteen days not to settle for a piss poor deal. So shout out to our negotiating committee.
I think a lot of people don't realize that those are unpaid positions, our actors who are dedicating their time, who are coming out from you know, maybe they don't live in LA A lot of actors don't live here year round, being away from their family, working on the weekends, being on the picket lines every single day for hours, in order to secure a fair contract for us and make sure that the work that we put in day
in and day out is valued. And we know it's valuable because it's making the studios billions of dollars and we're just asking for a portion of the profits.
I think that that was probably one of the most unsettling things, like First of all, when we go back to thinking about twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, for those of us that were privileged to be inside of our homes,
what were we doing. We were streaming content right like we were sitting and trying to escape the reality that we were in and being able to fall into series and shows and movies and what have the And the entire time that I was sitting on Mike couch behind me, I'm thinking, great for these people that are making what
I thought were the royalties of these shows. Because I'm functioning in my twentieth century mindset of you are on a hit show or you make a hit thing, and then you know you're making money into puts to do it.
Everyone was thinking, and you're so right that we kind of lifted the curtain in this moment because there were tons of actors from hit shows across all different streaming platforms that were showing their residual checks, and sometimes there
were thirty five cents. Sometimes they were negative because supposedly if the studio quote unquote overpaid you one time, they'd say, okay, well actually we overpaid you two dollars, so now this check is for negative two dollars just just mind blowing, especially when these are shows that are getting huge a war and we're getting tons of people, you know, seeing
themselves in these stories. And I think ultimately that is the thing that was really disheartening, was the fact that people were putting so much of themselves into this work and not being compensated fairly when the reality is, like you were saying, people are watching these shows and connecting with these characters and feeling affirmed and seen and comforted and are laughing and are crying and are you know,
having their minds expanded in these incredible ways. And unfortunately the studios were like, eh, but you know whatever, this is not a big of a deal. You don't deserve more than what you're getting. And I think it's a symptomatic of a consistent devaluing of the arts, not just for actors and writers, but musicians and visual artists and dancers. See a lot of people saying, well, you know, it's you're lucky to be able to do that for a living, And the reality is work is work.
It doesn't matter if you enjoy it right or you happen to be, you know, brilliant at it, it's still work.
Yes, yes, I think that.
You know, Also, what I learned during this time is that how these deals are kind of structured. So I want to give you an opportunity to kind of speak to that, not the deal that was reached, but how these streaming entities are able to make billions upon billions
of dollars. Where it is they're creating licensing deals with the with you know, network television, You as a content creator, you as an actor, are making a deal with let's say it is NBC Universal, right, and at the end of the day, NBC Universal is then tapped by let's say a Netflix we would like to buy said show. It is a licensing deal that they are making, which is outside of the all of the royalties, outside of
these things. And so if you don't, what I hope for all of you as we get into and understand what was signed and is what is going to be given, is that it was all of these carve outs in all of these ways to separate people from their ability to make profit off of their work.
Yeah, and just not fair. Yeah. No. The thing is I had a lot of people say, well, like, why weren't these things in the contract before? And the reality is there were certain things that we couldn't account for, right, So when we negotiated certain things, including residuals in the two thousand and seven strike, that was one of our big things. One of the one of the cornerstones of that strike was online media. Okay, this was early days of internet. YouTube was pretty new at that time, and
we had sent to st videos. I was not a member of the union yet, I was still in college, but at that time we said to the studios, we want to make sure that if our work is on the Internet that we receive compensation. And the studios were like, don't worry about it. Is that a big deal. So not that we didn't account for it. We fought for those residuals, but we could have never anticipated where we would be with streaming content fifteen years later. Right. And
so similarly, when it comes to AI protections. While AI is very powerful right now and it has its limitations, in three to five years AI is going to be very different. So even in twenty twenty, if we had been able to negotiate our deal, there's no telling what we would have been asking for. Because the technology, I mean, you've watched it get faster every day, it was like, AI can't do hands, and then a month later you're like, well,
it's getting better hands now. So we were putting certain things in the contract based on the landscape and what we project could could be down the pipeline for us. And the reality is when corporations want to take advantage of their employees, they're going to figure out ways to do it. And it's not our job to think of all the ways that you could screw us over. And so unfortunately, there were certain things that we had just not anticipated. For example, taking a series regular actors and
demoting them down to guest stars. That's something that we hadn't seen happen before, where someone would think, well, I am a series regular on the show. This means I'm going to be able to pay my health insurance, make enough money to you know, maybe buy a house or take care of my rent. And then the network just decides, you know what, We're actually going to demote you. You're in the same amount of episodes, you're in the same
amount of scenes, You're just going to get paid less. Well, that's not something that we anticipated was going to happen, right, So again, thank goodness that we have negotiating committees for both unions that include members who are not just representing us as leadership, but they are doing the work. They are actors on your favorite shows. They are writers, they are showrunners. They know the realities of how many writers we need in a room, what it looks like to
have equity for makeup and hairstylist. Right. You know what it's like to show up to set and they don't have your makeup shape, Oh gosh. They know what it's like to get an audition at the eleventh hour and it's ten scenes and you got to do it by tomorrow. Right. So these are things that we asked for, were significant asks that our membership said, this is what we need.
And so again I'm so thankful that we held out for a deal that's going to reflect the needs of our membership and most importantly, secure the future of new writers and new actors who want to join this industry and don't have, you know, a mom and dad that can fund their dreams. We want to make sure that if you get that opportunity of a lifetime, that doors are going to open for you and you're going to be able to live the life that you've earned. In this incredible industry.
You know, I just I wonder too your thoughts about, you know, how powerful unions actually are. You know, I think that there was a time when unions were really huge, right, and then eighties nineties they were diminished. They were made to be, you know, the devil. Oh we're going to stop, you know, productivity and people need to work, and unions are, you know, are the problem. We're seeing a resurgence now across industries of workers really understanding their rights and understanding
their power. How do you think that this will continue to create momentum and also expand opportunities, like you were saying, for people to be able to choose the different types of industries that they want to be a part of, but know that they'll be protected.
Yeah, I'm so glad to hear you say that, because it does feel like there's been a genormous cultural shift in the understanding of collective bargaining. And I made so much content explaining how the union protects us as writers and actors and how they advocate for us, and I got so many comments from people that would say, man, everything I've thought about unions is wrong, and I would
always counter with, well, who told you those things. Whose best interest is it to make you believe that unionizing is not in your best interests? Who benefits when you don't know how much your coworker is making. Who benefits the billionaire CEOs, That's who's benefiting. And so I did see unfortunately, you know that crabs and a barrel mentality. It was not just exclusive to our strikes. You saw
it when UPS was potentially going on strike. People were saying they don't deserve an hourly wage, a higher bump. They just deliver packages. The people at Amazon they don't deserve. I mean this idea of well, if that person's getting more, what does it mean about me? I should be getting more, which I remind people you're correct, yeah, right, Also you should also be getting more. Right, A lot of people will teachers aren't getting enough, and nurses, I agree, all
of those people should get more. And so to your question about collective bargaining and unionization, I really hope that what people take away from this moment, despite all of the challenges, despite the length of this strike, it's that when we work together, we can win. And the reality is things like AI are not going to just impact film and TV I can't go to the frequently asked questions on a website. I need to talk to a customer service person. It's AI is I can't even talk
to a regular representative. Right. When you need a secretary, you call and you need to make an appointment. They're using AI secretaries, right. So the reality is if you were looking at this strike and thinking, oh God, these people make so much money and they don't need anything, and I'm struggling to make ends meet, I counter her and say, you should also be able to afford to live in the city that you work in. You should also have healthcare. You should not have to work seven
days a week all times. You shouldn't have to have five, you know, multiple jobs, drive an uber, you know, doing uh, all these different like little task.
Grant it you shouldn't have to do.
You shouldn't have to do dozens of gigs in order to make ends meet. You shouldn't. And unfortunately the industry was trending that way for film and TV that it was turning our jobs into gig type jobs and it's just not fair. So my hope is that this is in inspiring people to talk to their coworkers, to talk to their friends and family about the realities of making an honest living and being able to take care of your family and buy groceries and put gas in your car.
The reality is the cost of living has gone up and wages have not, and they should be reflecting that. And the way that we get there is by working together and demanding better. You know.
Last question for you, Francesca, and I'm just so grateful for your time, is you know, we listen to some of these CEOs of these studios and these networks, it sounded sometimes like we were listening to a bond villain. Right, let them go bankrupt, let them eat cake, let them lose their homes. What do you think you know that the energy, you know, will be when everybody is now hopefully returning in the next you know, in the in the next week, in the next you know, couple of weeks.
When when you really did hear in interviews these multi i mean billionaires, millionaires saying some of the most vile things about people who make less than you know six I think I heard that the average writer again just to burst the bubble, is making like less than sixty thousand dollars a year. Right, doesn't have health insurance doesn't have these things. What is that going to experience you think going to be like, Well, the.
Reality is there are so many people that make up these companies. You know, you've got those CEOs up at the top, but you also have a lot of network executives who people that I've worked with, people that I'm friends with, people that I went to college with, people that I grew up with, that are also creative folks that work on the corporate side, and those people wanted to get back to work. Those are the people that are like, I think you should be paid more. Unfortunately,
I don't have a direct line to Bob Iiger. I can't decide what's going on. And so while it is going to be a tumultuous road back to work, because it's not happening tomorrow, we're at the end of twenty twenty three. The year is already winding down. I am optimistic that when we do get back to work, the people that work on the corporate side, the executives, are going to be excited and ready to support us because they haven't been able to work either. They've been sitting
on their hands waiting for the strict to end. Also, it's really those people at the top who are unfortunately very disconnected from the realities of what it means to be a working actor and a working writer. All Angelina Jolie's status and shout out to her because she was
still supporting us. Right, It's like, I do very well for myself, and I still believe that those at the you know, the under the line actors who are under that, you know, the top people on the call sheet, they deserve to make an honest and sustainable living as well. So you know, I still have a side eye for those major CEOs, but thankfully I won't be working with them. I've had some really incredible execs over the course of my career who are champions for us. You know, they're saying, look,
I want the show to go. I have to go take this up to my boss and they have to make the decision. So my hope is that after this lengthy time, our appetites will be ready to get back to work, and thankfully we will have two incredible contracts that not only help us get back to work, but make sure that our work is well compensated and protected.
France Atska, thank you so much. Thank you for using your platform to continue to like not only entertain, but inform, inform and form people so that they can be in solidarity and find ways to be in solidarity because we benefit so much from entertainment. I couldn't I couldn't think about what it would have been like to go through the kind of trauma of the last three years without being able, you know, to have the privilege to zone out on creative work, on beauty, on finding joy, on
all of these things. So really appreciate it.
So much, and I reflect that back to you as well, like you use your platform in such an incredible way to educate and uplift people. And I'm so glad that I, you know, can be a little family member of the show and be able to come back a second time, which is very delightful. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you sharing space with me and supporting the strike and supporting our efforts. It really means a lot.
That is it for me today, Dear friends on Woke a f as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.