Law & Order: SVU and Star Trek: Picard alum Michelle Hurd is explained, in a succinct and palatable fashion, why this SAG-AFTRA strike is happening and why it matters.
Hurd, who serves as SAG LA’s vice president, told TheWrap that she didn’t want people to cancel their streaming subscriptions, saying, “You know, that’s up to the individual. I will say, please amplify, stand up, let people know, do research, understand what we are talking about.”
“We are working-class people, we’re all journeymen actors,” she continued. “Think about all the actors that you see on TV, that you don’t know their names, but you are comforted every time you see them. Those are working-class actors. So I would say, you know, do your research, amplify support, make noise.”
Trace Lysette, known for her roles in projects like Hustlers and David Makes Man, also posted the interview on her Instagram page. In the full interview, Hurd talked about why it’s important to keep supporting working actors who are on streaming shows, outlining how working actors are living from check to check to make ends meet, regardless of how many shows they might appear on.
“Those actors are working-class actors. We’re literally working paycheck to paycheck,” she said. “It takes $26,000 to qualify for your health insurance for SAG-AFTRA. A guest star on a show, producers will do ‘top of show’–this is a verbiage that they created, it’s not in our contracts, it’s what they created–they’re not going to budge over whatever their top of show is. Top of show could be generally anywhere from $5,000 to $7,000 or $8,000 an episode. Maybe that sounds great. So say I cobbled together two or three guest [starring roles] during a year. Our audience sees me on three or four different shows and they’re like, ‘Wow, that actress is working, she’s doing all this stuff.’ I still, by doing that top of show, I still [have] not qualified for my health insurance. We literally are going paycheck to paycheck.”
She also said how studios did away with the quoting system that had been in place. The quoting system allowed actors to create and raise their quotes–the amount of money they could demand from a role–and the longer you were in the industry and the more illustrious a resume you had, the more you could quote. But now, the studios don’t acknowledge veteran actors’ time in the industry when it comes to how much they get paid.
“They decided to get rid of that [system] so they no longer acknowledge or respect that. This industry is one of the few industries that seniority…doesn’t mean anything to them,” said Hurd.
She also added that even though there some some “very wealthy” actors who are members of the union, they only make of one percent, and only two percent of that number of wealthy actors are the ones who are keeping health insurance for the 160,000 members afloat through supporting the union.
Watch the full video below.
