In a statement released Monday, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers claimed SAG-AFRTA “mischaracterized” the negotiations.
“The deal that SAG-AFTRA walked away from on July 12 is worth more than $1 billion in wage increases, pension & health contributions and residual increases and includes first-of-their-kind protections over its three-year term, including expressly with respect to AI,” it said in a press release.
Joely Fisher, SAG-AFTRA's national secretary-treasurer, told L.A. Morning News that isn’t true.
“I didn't see the latest thing from the producers but, I kind of think it's a little bit of B.S, quite frankly,” she said. “I was there for 35 days. They're not heads of studios. They're accountants and lawyers and bean counters and they represent, you know, their entities, and [SAG-AFTRA] sat eye to eye with them and, and went back and forth across the table with proposals that represented what was fair and what was just and what represented the cost of inflation and the cost of living. And we went incrementally so small back and forth, and I guess I would have to talk to our economists about the billion-dollar valuation, but I don't believe it's true.”
She added that she and SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher came into a system that Fisher believes is broken.
“It has historically, since the merge of the two unions, we have gone in and we have gone opposite these entities and we've given stuff away that was hard fought battles, you know, on the backs of our veteran(s), our icon(s), our movie stars, our legends in this business who gave up their residuals to form a health and pension plan,” she said.
She also said residuals has gone away thanks to streaming.
“…when you watch “The Nanny” or “Friends” or me on “Ellen Show”, you saw 22, 24. 26 episodes and then we participated in something called residuals, which is when you guys watch it again, when you watch it again in syndication, we get just a tiny, tiny, little bit of money and we participate in the profit for just a tiny, little bit,” she said. All of that has gone away with the advent of streaming. So all of you watch Netflix or Amazon Prime or anything that you watch and you watch the shows over and you binge them. There's no money to be had. We are not participating in that. So I'd like for them to come up with a billion dollars. That would be awesome for 160,000 people to participate.”
Fisher noted that this strike isn't about the movie stars.
“ This isn't movie stars screaming from their towers. This is working-class folks who need just a little bit more,” she said.
SAG-AFTRA officially joined the Writers’ Guild on the picket lines Friday. On Thursday, Drescher announced a strike would commence following a vote by its National Board.
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