It was Nov. 1, 2023, a few week earlier than the Hollywood actors union reached a take care of studios that ended a historic strike. The labor group’s president, Fran Drescher, was feeling the warmth from A-listers and rank-and-file performers alike to make good on greater than 100 days of withheld labor. That day, she posted a morning routine video to her Instagram.
Barefaced and clad in a gown in entrance of a mirror, Drescher instructed her followers she didn’t have to “emulate male power” to steer the union. After making use of lipstick on digital camera for impact, she instructed them she may information her 160,000 members with energy and nonetheless “rock a purple lip.” Within the video’s remaining scene, she brandished a heart-shaped plushie toy that she dropped at negotiations with trade CEOs. “Want me luck!” she mentioned as she ready to stroll out the door.
It was simply the type of communication — casual, slightly kooky and surprisingly compelling — that made Drescher a magnet for consideration and arguably a potent spokesperson for Hollywood labor throughout its sprawling 2023 battle for AI protections and compensation within the streaming period. Love her or hate her, the previous Nanny star helped preserve the union collectively throughout its 118-day strike as SAG-AFTRA secured its first protections towards generative AI and a bonus system to reward profitable streaming initiatives.
However now, with one other robust contract negotiation on the horizon, SAG-AFTRA goes to need to push ahead with out its erstwhile chief from Queens. This time round, Drescher has determined towards working for president. In her place, one other movie star, Lord of the Rings and Rudy star Sean Astin, and a rank-and-file performer, New England Native board member Chuck Slavin, are battling it out for the job. The stakes are excessive, on condition that the candidates face a darker and extra foreboding panorama than the one which even Drescher confronted when she entered workplace in 2021 throughout the pandemic.
Sean Astin (left) is working for SAG-AFTRA president on a slate of alums of Fran Drescher’s administration, whereas rival Chuck Slavin calls himself a reform candidate.
Take the primary merchandise on the platform for The Coalition 2025 slate: bringing extra manufacturing again to the U.S. Led by Astin, whose mom, Patty Duke, led SAG as president from 1985-88, the slate guarantees to help laws that gives a carrot to productions capturing domestically. Its candidates additionally pledge to carry employers “accountable” for the slowdown in work by pressuring them to return extra shoots to the U.S. That’s in response to the latest downward strain on budgets that has additional pushed manufacturing to hubs just like the U.Ok., Canada and Australia and has diminished the quantity of labor for performers.
As actors reel from firms’ austerity measures, the reform slate led by Slavin is advocating for simpler entry for California-based members to unemployment. Slavin says that if elected, he’ll push California to exclude residuals for historic work from being thought-about present-day earnings in a bid to additional open up unemployment advantages to extra actors.
Although Drescher is exiting the political stage, The Coalition 2025 slate in key methods represents a continuation of her method. She noticed herself as a unifier and in 2023 made good on that aspiration with a slate of working mates who had belonged to the separate Unite for Power and Membership First camps. In Hollywood labor phrases, that was slightly bit as if Republicans and Democrats joined palms to type one superparty. Although the teams had some pretty mundane political variations — Unite for Power represented a extra reasonable, outward-looking wing of the union, whereas Membership First was composed of hardliners with an inward focus — that they had bickered, accused one another of violating labor legislation and, in some circumstances, exchanged authorized threats for years.
The Coalition 2025 is once more combining the 2 former opponents on one slate, with previous Membership First supporter Astin working alongside former Unite for Power candidate Michelle Hurd, who’s searching for the secretary-treasurer place. They’re institution figures, each having performed key roles within the 2023 strike as members of the negotiating committee and the union’s nationwide board. If not family names, they’re recognizable faces, with Hurd having performed roles on Blindspot, Star Trek: Picard and the rom-com Anybody however You.
The reform slate, in the meantime, is promising a altering of the guard. Slavin and working mate Peter Antico could also be obscure to the lay leisure client however are acquainted figures inside SAG-AFTRA politics. Slavin, a SAG-AFTRA New England Native board member since 2012 and a background actor and performer in indies, has previous to the election been vocal in his want for extra safeguards round using generative AI and in opposition to vaccine mandates on movie and TV productions. A former Membership First affiliate, Antico went unbiased within the 2010s and served on the nationwide and L.A. Native boards between 2010 and 2020. The actor and stunt coordinator (Deadpool 2, Dangerous Boys II, Coaching Day) was one of many plaintiffs in a lawsuit difficult the 2012 merger of SAG and AFTRA that was settled. (Different concepts that Antico has floated embrace making a tech software that tracks content material to search out unpaid residuals for members, constructing a “Google-style campus” for SAG-AFTRA and having the union spend money on gold.)
Collectively, Slavin and Antico have taken an aggressive stance towards their opponents (whom they deem “establishment” candidates) and choices made on Drescher’s watch. Their web site helps suing the union on behalf of members who had been “discriminated towards or misplaced work for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine.” Slavin has lately criticized Astin for engaged on The Lord of the Rings with out SAG-AFTRA protection, saying he ought to be “disqualified from holding the workplace of SAG-AFTRA Nationwide President.” Astin says he signed on for the movies earlier than SAG-AFTRA instituted its rule forbidding members from initiatives with no union contract internationally. Astin provides to The Hollywood Reporter that “no guidelines had been damaged, both in letter or spirit” in making the movies.
For all their variations, each camps appear centered on the fundamentals of member welfare and negotiating sturdy contracts. After the 2023 actors strike, some SAG-AFTRA members have been vocal about struggling to qualify for the union’s well being plan — a problem each slates seem keen to deal with. Slavin is asking for “versatile” well being plan protection choices; at present, solely a fraction of members make the $27,540 in earnings (or work the 106 days) required to be eligible. Slavin is advocating for residuals to be included as eligible earnings for union members who’re senior residents. For his or her half, The Coalition 2025 desires to “battle for” seniors who misplaced their well being advantages in 2020 and supply extra entry for the plans to new members who could not qualify for present thresholds.
This time round in talks with studios, union negotiators will likely be dealing with a brand new however acquainted opponent on the opposite facet of the desk after longtime studio negotiator Carol Lombardini stepped down. Labor and employment lawyer Gregory Hessinger, himself a former nationwide government director of the American Federation of Tv and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Display Actors Guild (SAG) earlier than their merger, has taken her seat. Irrespective of who wins the SAG-AFTRA elections, Hessinger will possible be confronted with a union push for stronger AI protections and streaming residuals that may higher maintain members amid the decline of linear TV, which each slates are supporting.
The union’s subsequent leaders might also deal with tying up some free ends of their TV and movie contract. THR discovered earlier this yr that solely a handful of reveals certified within the first half of 2024 for the streaming success bonus that was a key win of the union’s strike one yr earlier (Netflix hits Avatar: The Final Airbender and Griselda had been mentioned to be titles that had triggered the bonus). The union has not but unveiled particulars of its “Robin Hood fund,” spearheaded by Drescher, which seeks to share the spoils of streaming success with a big pool of members. Furthermore, on the AI entrance, members have complained that getting scanned for the job could be a situation of employment and that their present contract doesn’t bar firms from utilizing their performances to coach AI instruments.
That’s quite a bit to arrange for in simply the few months between the election (the union’s poll return deadline is Sept. 12) and the beginning of contract negotiations (possible early in 2026). The union’s subsequent leaders could have their work lower out for them when it comes to constructing on the provisions they negotiated in 2023. Drescher introduced larger visibility and idiosyncratic feistiness to SAG-AFTRA, however can that momentum be sustained? Her heels received’t be simple ones to fill.
This story appeared within the Aug. 20 difficulty of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.
