After yesterday’s Imagine Dragons party outside of Netflix, it was now Paramount’s turn.
Around 900 strikers swarmed the streets of Melrose in support of the WGA West’s Committee of Black Writers.
Among them were stars like Samira Wiley, Gabby Sidibe, Kendrick Sampson and Robin Thede.
Valuable Star Sidibe told Deadline: “I’m on strike with the writers because if they don’t work, I can’t work.” Orange is the new black Star Wiley said she was on the strike line to support her wife, writer Lauren Morelli. “My house is a two-union household,” she added.
Thede, creator and star of HBOs A black lady sketch show warned the studios to “stop being cheap”. “I am striking because paying authors a daily rate is an abomination. We’re still professionals and deserve to be paid like that,” she added.
Kendrick Sampson, who starred in Unsure, The Flash And How to get away with murder, told Deadline that people underestimated how many people would show up in support of black writers. “Everyone thought there would be about 10 people out here but there are hundreds and they are demanding pay and a better life. Our storytellers need to be protected, especially in times of CRT and attacks on our stories. We have to make sure that we support and create safe spaces and good material conditions, pay and money for these authors,” he said.
A day after CBS launched, Robert and Michelle King were also there to lend a helping hand Elsbethher latest spin-off of the good wife, and added it to the fall schedule. Robert King told Deadline that he is committed to both AI regulation and mini-spaces.
“We traveled in 2007 and 2008, I was on the negotiation committee and I saw the difference we made taking internet and streaming under our wing. Now that’s the new divide with the AI, but more importantly the advent of mini-rooms that we’ve never encountered before, we thought that would be a death. It’s a race to the bottom,” he added.
Ike Barinholtz has been at Paramount every day since the strike began and called today “the best day here.” “The black community has emerged. I’ve been fortunate to learn from some great black writers and we’re all in this together, it’s solidarity in motion,” he said.
Bob Odenkirk and Mandy Patinkin at the WGA picket line in New York
Over on the other side of the country, in new York The likes of Mandy Patinkin and Bob Odenkirk were on the picket lines along with John Leguizamo
“I think it’s important to represent [writers] and be here in solidarity with my writers because everything begins with writing, the origin of every story is writers. Without them you have nothing and if you don’t give them their fair wages, the CEOs pay crazy, disgusting and obscene salaries, but they don’t share the wealth, that’s not okay,” he told Deadline.
It was a Wednesday with Fat Tuesday mood at the writers’ strike in New York: On a warm and sunny morning in front of the branch offices of the streaming giant Amazon in Manhattan, a small jazz combo played brass music in New Orleans style for more than 400 people , who were conducting a strike demonstration line and gave a situational revision to the text of the old spiritual When The Saints Go Marching In.
The live music lent a festive Mardi Gras atmosphere to the recent demonstration by members and supporters of the Writers Guild of America.
“The door is open,” WGA East President Michael Winship told Deadline. “We wait for them when they want to come back to the table.”
Beginning around 11 a.m. Wednesday, protesters marched in a narrow loop along two blocks of Tenth Avenue, which was riddled with traffic and surmounted by a tower of glass and steel. As the noon clock ticked by, more and more protesters arrived and attached letters to a union signage. They carried pickets from the WGA, SAG-AFTRA and the stage workers’ union IATSE. A handful wore signs identifying themselves as UAW – United Auto Workers.
“We cover all the unions here,” Odenkirk said.
A contingent in blue T-shirts carried blue tags representing the AEA – Actors Equity Association, the union representing Broadway talent on stage.
“We’re all blue-collar workers,” said Sarah LaBarr, a singer, actress, teacher, and Actors Equity member based in Kansas City, Missouri. “If you don’t write a paycheck, you earn a paycheck. That’s why we’re here today – to support workers. It doesn’t matter what your job is; we are here.”
Actors Equity chief executive Alvin Vincent Jr. said he and other AEA members marched Wednesday to show “solidarity with the WGA and the other sibling unions.”
“That’s really the key to sticking together,” Vincent said when asked how Actors Equity can help writers prevail on an indefinite strike “so everyone gets paid fairly.”
A WGA official said more than 1,000 members of writers’ union and actors’ union SAG-AFTRA checked in on site during Wednesday’s three-hour demonstration — the latest of several “actions” at local studio offices, production facilities and the Triebe site since March 2. May.
WGA East’s Winship said that taking part in the protests on both coasts was a sign of the strength of the writers’ union and said demonstrations would spread to “other cities, we hope”, as the strike progressed.
“The last strike, when I was also president of this union, lasted a hundred days and we got through it,” Winship said. “What we’re telling people is what we’re always saying in the weeks leading up, which is hope for the best, prepare for the worst. We hope it won’t be a long strike, but if it is, we’re ready. We have strike funds for loans. We have various ways to continue supporting our members, various measures to keep morale up and we are prepared for the long haul.”