Fran Drescher says studios’ latest strike move shocked her: "So disrespectful"

On Wednesday, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers—which includes major Hollywood studios and streamers like Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, Disney, and more—decided to walk away from negotiations with SAG-AFTRA, further jeopardizing the 2024 film and television slate rather than cut a deal with the actors guild. The decision was a puzzling one for those of us on the outside, especially given the recent deal struck with the writers guild. And apparently, it was just as confusing for those on the inside, according to SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher.

“It really came as a shock to me because what does that exactly mean and why would you walk away from the table? It’s not like we’re asking for anything that’s so outrageous,” The Nanny star said in an interview with Today on Friday. “It’s so wrong. And it’s so unfair that they walked out of the meeting, and so disrespectful. You know when I was there, I mean they talk at you. They really don’t want to hear what you have to say or why you’re saying it.”

According to NBC’s Chloe Melas, Drescher claimed that she was “talked over” and “couldn’t get a word in edgewise.” SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, on the other hand, described the talks “as very candid, very direct, intense at times, but in a respectful sort of way” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. However, he similarly described the studios’ decision to walk away as “mystifying.” He said, “I think that’s a completely wrongheaded decision. There is no way to move this forward without talking. And it took them so long to get back to the table in the first place. It’s really disappointing that after this amount of time, they would just walk away again.”

On Thursday, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos spoke about the situation at the Bloomberg Screentime conference, saying, “We had very productive talks going, then what kind of happened last night. They introduced this levy on subscribers. It just felt like a bridge too far to add this deep into the negotiation.”

SAG-AFTRA has stated that the AMPTP has overstated the cost of this proposal, and Drescher pointed out that the studios’ bargaining team didn’t even give a counter for their proposal, choosing to walk away instead. “We made a huge, huge concession on streaming revenue share, changing that proposal away from a revenue percentage into just a viewership proposal—massive move in their direction,” Crabtree-Ireland said to THR. “I’m truly shocked that they have not responded favorably to that and that they instead decided to walk away from the table.”

Crabtree-Ireland has called for the studios to return to negotiations because “This walking away thing isn’t a way to make progress.” Having studio CEOs in the room has been clarifying, he said, because “hearing from the CEOs—finally, it took them a few days to get around to it—saying, ‘We just will not agree to a revenue share proposal under any circumstance, we will not share revenue, period,’ hearing that from the ultimate decision-maker does help you figure out how to structure your response to that. And as I mentioned, we accommodated that by changing our proposal to attach a totally different way.”

He added, “So having them in the room has the potential to make a huge difference, but they’ve got to be there. They’ve got to be in the room and they have to engage. Having them in the room and just refusing to respond to proposals doesn’t really get us in.”