colorofspring

HELLA’S VALENTINE’S DAY COUNTDOWN         ➛ 7. Regina & Emma (Once Upon a Time)

Interview with Michelle Hurd (SAG LA Vice President):

All your favorite things that you've been watching for years, and you know those actors that you go, "Oh, there's that guy on that show." You may not necessarily know their names—you may see me on a show, you may not know my name, but you've seen me on a lot of things. Those actors, those actors are working-class actors. We're literally working paycheck-to-paycheck.

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—so they're not gonna budge above whatever their top-of-show is. Top-of-show, generally, could be anywhere from $5,000 to $7 or $8,000 an episode. Maybe that sounds great. So say I cobble together 2 or 3 guest stars during a year. People, our audiences, sees me on 3 or 4 different shows, and they're like, "Wow, that actress is working, she's doing all this stuff." I still, by doing that with top-of-show, I have still not qualified for my health insurance. We literally are going paycheck to paycheck.

Back in the day, we used to have quotes. That once you've been working for a certain amount of time, you're working really hard to get your quote up, to get your salary up. They decided to get rid of that, so they no longer acknowledge or respect that. This industry is one of the few industries that seniority, that being in this industry for a long time, that gathering up an amazing resume, doesn't mean anything to them.

Yes, there is some very wealthy actors. Absolutely. There's 160,000 members in our union. 160,000. 1% are the top grossers. 1%. And of that, maybe 2% are the ones that literally support and uplift our union, and keep the insurance going. Everybody else is below the line.

People don't realize that SAG-AFTRA is not just actors. We're broadcasters, we're stunt coordinators, stunt workers. We're dancers and singers and voiceover artists. There's a huge umbrella that we encompass, and 98% of those people are below the line? Are struggling to make a living? In an industry that we all know is making billions?

I think about this all the time, we talk about this in our caucuses. Back in the day, we used to talk about millions, everybody wanted to make millions, and oh wouldn't that be amazing. These people are making billions, and yet they don't have money to give us just a scooch more? To contribute to our pension and health? To allow us to qualify for our health insurance?

We have actors that you all will recognize. You will know us from that guy on that show that have lost their insurance, no longer qualify, and are hustling just to get a day on a job to just pay their rent. Not even their insurance, their rent.

Looking at eg. House of the Dragon last year, which spaced out 10 episodes over 10 weeks (that is 2 1/2 months) and the fandom content production and fandom discussions over multiple platforms were so high! It gave fans time to speculate, to produce and to wait for. It held the anticipation high and invigorated the fandom over a long time.

In the traditional broadcasting structure, you have an episode a week at a set time - you sit down and you watch it, maybe make a family thing out of it. The next day you go to work, and your coworkers have seen the episode too, and you talk about it - because a tv show is a safe topic (not political, not too personal), so you have something to bond over/socialize.

he said, “you have to stop doing that.”

“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.

but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.” 

i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”

as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck. 

“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”