Take a moment, step back regardless of age, and think about all of the truly “big decisions” you’ve made to this point in your life. Most folks land between 5-10 decisions. Ironically, what I’ve found in my life is that I tended to think decisions were larger than they really were when I was younger.<\/p>\n
When you’re an actor doing live theatre, or a large ensemble cast in a feature film or television series, you are genuinely on a TEAM. Still, acting at its core, is an individual sport. It is 9 people, on a field together, yet separate in so many ways as they catch, throw and hit the ball\u2026all alone.<\/p>\n
Making the decision, to vote to go out on strike, putting more than 100,000 actors potentially out of work is NO small decision. To be a member of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA TV\/Theatrical Negotiating Committee is not a role I took lightly. We ALL knew this one was going to be historically different.<\/p>\n
For the first time in history we already knew that artificial intelligence (A.I.) was going to be “on the table” as well as needing to bring “Revenue Sharing” into the negotiations. Our TV\/Theatrical contract is more than 1200 pages long. Probably 95-98% of union actors have never so much as cracked one page in terms of sitting down to read it.<\/p>\n
To me the greatest paradox of wanting to Be a Star<\/em> or make a tremendous living as an actor is that the more successful you are, the more you absolutely must treat it as a business, full stop.<\/p>\n The SAG-AFTRA TV\/Theatrical contract expired on 6\/30\/2020. On July 1, 2020 the march toward 6\/30\/2023 had begun. With each passing day, week, month we could see what is coming down the tracks and it was a really HUGE train of A.I. and millions of dollars only going to the top executives.<\/p>\n Once the decision to “walk out” became official at midnight on July 12, 2023 my focus turned directly toward HOW do we WIN this negotiation. The 44-person negotiating committee, which represented 160,000 actors, voted unanimously to strike. Not ONE individual, alternates included, voted against. THAT is SOLIDARITY.<\/p>\n The Radio Show “Your Call”<\/strong> is hosted by Rose Aguilar<\/a>. Guests: Kevin E. West<\/a> and Jonterri Gadson<\/a>.<\/p>\n