The current WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are leading to actors cutting costs as upcoming projects stall. One of whom is Billy Porter, who has resorted to selling his house.
Porter, who won an Emmy for his work on FX's Pose, revealed to the Evening Standard that he hasn't made "f**k you" money yet and the life of an artist is "check-to-check", meaning his home has had to be sold.
"I have to sell my house. Yeah! Because we’re on strike. And I don’t know when we’re gonna go back [to work]. The life of an artist, until you make f**k you money — which I haven’t made yet — is still check-to-check. I was supposed to be in a new movie, and on a new television show starting in September. None of that is happening. So to the person who said ‘we’re going to starve them out until they have to sell their apartments,’ you’ve already starved me out."
Porter's line about starving people out until they have to sell their apartments is a reference to a Deadline article in June, in which an anonymous Hollywood studio executive claimed the studios would hold off meeting with the WGA again until its members were broke.
The Pose star also criticized Disney CEO Bob Iger for his comments in a July 13 interview at the Sun Valley Conference in which he stated that WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikers were not being "realistic" with their demands.
"In the late Fifties, early Sixties, when they structured a way for artists to be compensated properly through residual [payments], it allowed for the two percent of working actors — and there are 150,000 people in our union — who work consistently…Then streaming came in.
"There’s no contract for it…And they don’t have to be transparent with the numbers — it’s not Nielsen ratings anymore. The streaming companies are notoriously opaque with their viewership figures. The business has evolved. So the contract has to evolve and change, period. To hear Bob Iger say that our demands for a living wage are unrealistic? While he makes $78,000 a day?
"I don’t have any words for it, but: f**k you. That’s not useful, so I’ve kept my mouth shut. I haven’t engaged because I’m so enraged. I’m glad I’ve been over here [in England]. But when I go back I will join the picket lines."
Iger had said of the strikes at the time, "It’s very disturbing to me. We’ve talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges we’re facing, the recovery from COVID which is ongoing, it’s not completely back.
"This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption…There’s a level of expectation that [strikers] have, that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive."
Porter, who is an Oscar away from EGOTing (winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award) has his work on display at the Barbican Theatre in London, currently, where the Usher starring A Strange Loop is being performed to regularly delighted audiences. The musical has been co-produced by Porter, landing the 53-year-old his second Tony award (his first came for Best Actor for Kinky Boots in 2013).
The theatre icon was also backed up by SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher, who slammed Iger’s comments in an interview with Variety, calling the Disney CEO's words "terribly repugnant," "out of touch" and "positively tone deaf."
"I don’t think it served him well. If I were that company, I would lock him behind doors and never let him talk to anybody about this, because it’s so obvious that he has no clue as to what is really happening on the ground with hard working people that don’t make anywhere near the salary he is making.
"High seven figures, eight figures, this is crazy money that they make, and they don’t care if they’re land barons of a medieval time."
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