Welcome to Vulture’s Strike Recap, or Strike-cap, if you will, a regular rundown of all the biggest news from the WGA picket lines.
Another week, another awards show going on without guild writers. The 2023 BET Awards were held June 25, and they made much less to-do about being unscripted than the Tonys did earlier this month. According to Los Angeles magazine, neither BET nor the show’s production company, Jesse Collins Entertainment, has a collective bargaining agreement with the WGA, so the show has never hired guild writers. The awards show was hostless but did have a teleprompter, and we know this because Patti Labelle needed to see the lyrics to “Simply the Best†for her Tina Turner tribute. The show was not without support for the strike. “I must take a moment to acknowledge and stand in solidarity with the artists who make us laugh, cry, and most importantly, think — our Writers Guild of America family,†Muni Long said before introducing Kaliii.
DGA Says Yeah
The DGA membership ratified its new contract, with 87 percent of the people who voted voting “yes.†The 13 percent (of the 41 percent of members who voted at all) were vocal on Twitter, but it did turn out that a quieter majority was pro-contract. DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter told the New York Times that the guild “didn’t bargain in a vacuum†and remains “united with writers, actors and all crew members in our shared fight to move our industry forward.â€
SAG Heightens the Drama of It All
SAG-Aftra President Fran Drescher won our Strike Main Character Award (Bad) back in May when she drew members’ ire for downplaying the idea that SAG would strike. But now she’s made a resounding comeback, as she gained support for reelection from both of SAG’s political parties. (Yep, SAG has its own political parties.) “We stand upon the precipice of a new dawn,†she said in a statement that sounds like it should’ve been delivered from a balcony overlooking townspeople. “And with this show of solidarity we have become all the more empowered.†This comes on the heels of a video released by Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland in which they seemed to reassure members that they were headed toward a “seminal deal,†while also noting that “we have a very narrow window of time remaining before our contract expires.†Neither mentioned the possibility of a strike — which could technically happen as soon as Friday unless both sides agree to a two-week extension — so do with that information what you will.
Spotted: 5,000 WGA Writers and Supporters in L.A.
On the day 51 of the strike, 5,000 writers and well-wishers gathered at Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles for a “WGA Strong†rally. I’m a Virgo writer-director Boots Riley, WGA negotiating-committee member Adam Conover, and Teamsters Local 399 leader Lindsay Dougherty spoke, and there was a performance by Aloe Blacc. The group marched from Pan Pacific Park to the La Brea Tar Pits. “They’re scared of what’s going on,†Riley said. “They’re scared of how militant, how ready to fight we’ve become.â€
A New Way to Support the Strike: Email
At the beginning of the strike, many nonwriters who wanted to show their support asked whether they should end their streaming subscriptions or otherwise boycott the studios. The WGA never called for a boycott, but nobody never said nothing about sending a few emails. TikTok user @brieeeeez made a video of her boyfriend giving customer feedback to Apple. And that feedback? Severance season two needs the original writers, and it needs to be soon.
@brieeeeez apple tv bring us severance season 2!!!!!!!!!!!!! #severance
♬ original sound - Brie
A Winter Emmys?
Deadline reported last week that both Fox and the Television Academy have been discussing pushing the September 18 Emmy Awards ceremony if the strike isn’t over by early August. They seem to agree there’s simply no point in giving Ted Lasso a bunch of statues if they can’t reunite Kenan and Kel in between speeches.
The Strike Main Character Award (Bad)
Kim Kardashian may be beefing with her sister Kourtney on their Hulu show, but she’s also feuding with dozens of writers for blithely posting about working on AHS season 12. When Kimberly tweeted, “I’m on set of AHS and we have some time between shots. What are you all up to????†guild members took it as the “dunk on Kim K†prompt it was perhaps always destined to be.
The Strike Main Character Award (Bad Boy)
Taylor Sheridan is a pretty perfect villain: rich, lives in a remote lair, wears a hat, etc. In a Hollywood Reporter profile this week, he denigrated the WGA’s desire to require studios to hire more than one writer per show. “The freedom of the artist to create must be unfettered,†he said. “If they tell me, ‘You’re going to have to write a check for $540,000 to four people to sit in a room that you never have to meet,’ then that’s between the studio and the guild. But if I have to check in creatively with others for a story I’ve wholly built in my brain, that would probably be the end of me telling TV stories.†Look, far be it from us to question the lone genius of Hollywood’s most special boy right now, but come on, bro. He also admitted to not knowing what a lot of the people who work for him actually do, which leads us right into this week’s …
The Strike Main Character Award (Good)
Script coordinators have a thankless gig on which an entire production often hinges, unbeknownst to the very special geniuses like Sheridan. “They tell me there’s a story coordinator,†he said in the same interview, “but I don’t know who that is.†(Imagine not even knowing the name or correct title of the person whose job it is to make the scripts you scrawled out in eight hours readable.) The outrage this caused, however, has brought the integral work these folks do into the spotlight, for once! Turns out that even though the very wealthy may just assume things happen because they tell someone else to do it, it is actually because of the someone else agreeing to do it that it gets done!
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