SAG-AFTRA is joining the WGA on strike. What happens now?

30:07SAG-AFTRA is joining the WGA on strike. What happens now?

Hollywood actors are now on strike, Hollywood writers have been on strike since May, the studios and streamers are perhaps more powerful than they've ever been — and there are a lot of questions about where the industry goes from here.

In a special edition of Commotion's end-of-week group chat, Vulture writer Kathryn VanArendonk, Vanity Fair writer Chris Murphy and WGA strike captain Kathryn Borel join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to explain just how broken the business of entertainment is, and what we can expect to happen next as the strike unfolds.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Let's talk a little bit about how [actors] have a different kind of power than the writers do here.

Kathryn VanArendonk: It is really funny to me, actually, that the actors are striking and that one of the major issues is whether or not AI can be allowed to scan your likeness and then your face is used forever — because that is exactly the thing that studios want. They know how powerful it is to have your face and to be able to use that familiar face in whatever way they decide it needs to be used [for a story]. And so for it to be exactly those same faces that are now the ones saying, "Guess what? You can't take our face. This is the thing that is powerful, and we are now going to demonstrate how powerful it is to you by showing up on a picket line." It just feels so incredibly ill-conceived of the studios to have let it get this bad. I am very, very curious what the messaging is going to look like for the next several weeks as they attempt to ignore seeing incredibly famous movie stars talking about these issues.

WATCH | Fran Drescher delivers speech on SAG-AFTRA strike:

Elamin: Kathryn Borel, we should talk about the fact that it is day 74 of your strike. It's day one for your friends who are actors. How are you holding up 74 days into this thing?

Kathryn Borel: One of the great things about SAG is that they've been showing up since day one as well. I think they were preparing for the reality that they might strike because their existential issues are very similar to our existential issues in terms of the idea of likeness, voice and face…. A friend of mine who's a writer said something great at the beginning of the strike, which is that it's existential because what we feel is what you see, if we're doing our jobs right on TV. That's what's being undermined in terms of the AI question and component of it.

Selfishly, obviously having a bunch of high-profile drama queens on the [picket] line is going to be absolutely amazing in terms of reinforcing the lifeblood of the line. But I really want to say they've been out with us since day one. Flavor Flav sends pizzas to us. I have eaten a slice of Flavor Flav pizza, it's great. It was pepperoni. He hand-delivers them to the line. But no, it's the fact that they've been out there since day one, and now they're out here legitimately with us. I think it is going to give us so much of a longer arc in terms of what this is. Unfortunately, I think it will make it go on for longer. But at the same time, there's no choice. We have to be in this fight because if we're not, we won't have jobs to go back to. We won't have an industry to go back to that's sustainable. So, it's necessary.

It just feels so incredibly ill-conceived of the studios to have let it get this bad.- Kathryn VanArendonk

Elamin: The day before the actors went on strike, Kathryn VanArendonk, Deadline published a story that made quite a few waves across the Internet, The story was some kind of unnamed source talking on behalf of the studios, saying that the strategy is to hold out until writers basically can't pay their rent anymore. It really seemed to have made the air a little bit more toxic in terms of the conversations between these two parties. What will it take for the studios to actually budge in this context?

Kathryn VanArendonk: It's a question that I think actually nobody has a good answer to at this point, because everyone does feel so far apart on some of these issues. If you read some of the reporting that is close to the studios' side, the studios seem to feel that it is also existential for them — that they are having a hard time making money. So this is not an issue that people are going to be ready to come back to the table over very quickly.

One of the things that I do think is really fascinating — and I am going to be really excited to see how it plays out over the next several weeks or months — is that the studios are not the same kind of monolithic bloc that they were in the 2007-2008 strike. That is a group that now includes old school, NBC-type models and Netflix and Prime. Nobody knows how Prime makes its money, or what those shows actually do for them. And so the idea that they have to negotiate as a bloc is, I think, increasingly going to [influence] how this plays out now.

Elamin: Chris, we've already seen this enormous impact because of the writers strike. What happens now that the actors are out as well?

Chris: We've got to sort of buckle down and brace ourselves for a very non-A-list summer and fall. We're going to lose a lot of things we're looking forward to… The Emmys, they're probably not going to happen in September. Maybe they'll get postponed to November, or maybe even January. Our beloved film festivals — our Venice's, our TIFF's — these are not going to have star power. Stars are not allowed to do any FYC campaigns or show up to any events.

Elamin: They can't even post trailers online!

Chris: No.

Elamin: It's that level of blackout.

Chris: It is that serious. It's that much of a hard line in the sand. And even worse, if you will, we're not going to be able to get our new seasons of shows — our season three of Abbott Elementary, our season three of The Bear. Actors cannot show up to set. Writers are not writing scripts. We're going to be in a sort of scripted series blackout for the time being, and we're going to probably see a lot of reality TV and a lot of unscripted television come to the forefront. So get ready to turn on Bravo and meet some housewives.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.