WandaVision background actors say Disney scanned them, didn't say why

Today, in Marvel/techno-dystopia news: Background actors who appeared on Disney+’s streaming success story WandaVision revealed in recent interviews that, at one point during the show’s filming, they were herded over to a “tractor trailer” filled with cameras, scanned and photographed for 15 minutes from multiple angles and with multiple expressions, and then sent on their way—no explanation given.

And while the scans happened way back while the show was filming, between 2019 and 2020, the issues raised by them have moved to the forefront of late. The issue of studios using digital scans of actors—and who owns those images—was one of the more worrisome points SAG-AFTRA raised right when it first went on strike, with chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland noting that the studios’ proposed solution on AI was, from the union’s point of view, woefully inadequate in terms of protecting background actors and extras from being scanned once, and then having their likenesses used, for free, in perpetuity.

The reveals about WandaVision come courtesy of NPR, which interviewed Alexandria Rubalcaba, a background actor on the series, about her experience. “Have your hands out. Have your hands in. Look this way. Look that way. Let us see your scared face. Let us see your surprised face,” Rubalcaba said of the instructions she was given, adding that she never explicitly granted Disney permission to use a digital replica of her. “What if I don’t want to be on MarioVision, or SarahVision?” she hypothetically asked “I fear that AI is eventually going to weed out background actors. They won’t have any use for us anymore.” (Rubalcaba says she was paid $187 per day for her time on the series, the SAG-AFTRA standard rate for background actors.)

The NPR report also says reporters talked to five other regular background actors who say they’ve been “surprised” by scans while filming on shows or movies, dating back to at least 2019; all said they acceded to the requests without asking questions because they were worried about being labeled “difficult” or otherwise retaliated against.

But, hey: At least studios have said they won’t use scans of background actors for anything but the projects they’ve been hired on. Another sticking point comes down to the matter of consent to use the scans: The unions are pushing for the studios to have to ask for it every time they decide to use the scans, while the studios say that once—at the time of acquisition—should be enough.