What Are Actors Allowed to Do During the SAG-AFTRA Strike?

A writer for FX’s successful series The Bear, Alex O’Keefe, recently attended the 2023 WGA Awards honoring his show as a nominee. O’Keefe, and the rest of his writing team, won the prestigious award for Best Comedy Series, a testament to the quality of their art that has entertained millions of viewers. However, while accepting that award, Alex O’Keefe had a negative balance in his bank account.

This is the distressing reality for many screenwriters. As the landscape of television has shifted from cable to streaming as the default medium for many audiences, studio executives have seized the opportunity in the chaos to underpay their writers. Writing rooms continue to shrink with unrealistic timelines, residual systems no longer function to properly compensate the people who worked on the projects, and writers are staring down the barrel of artificial intelligence threatening to remove the soul and purpose of art itself.

As of Friday, July 14th, the actors of SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild, joined the writers on the picket line after unresolved negotiations with the studios for fairer working conditions and compensation. The last writer’s strike took place in 2007, the last actor’s strike took place in 1980, and the last time the two guilds struck together was in 1960. This is a monumental show of solidarity in a drastically new technological era and the guidelines for what actors can and cannot do have been clarified in a SAG bulletin.

RELATED: ‘Yellowstone’ to Air on CBS in Place of New Scripted Content Amid WGA & SAG-AFTRA Strikes

Activities Not Permitted Under the Strike

On-camera work: The most obvious point, performers striking with SAG are not allowed to take part in any on-camera acting, singing, dancing, stunt work, puppeteering, or motion capture work unless otherwise specified.

Off-camera work: ADR (audio replacement), voice acting, narration, and stunt coordination are all prohibited activities. In addition, on-set activities like stand-in, photo double, and body double work are not permitted.

Promotion: Actors are not allowed to give interviews, participate in press junkets, podcasts, represent struck films at premieres or screenings, or any other promotion for projects affiliated with the AMPTP.

Negotiating future work: Any agreements to partake in services in the future, auditioning for projects (including self-tapes), or any other studio-affiliated work are not permitted.

Rehearsals: Actors are not allowed to attend rehearsals or camera tests, fittings, makeup tests, or any other work affiliated with preparing for studio work.

Social media promotion: Actors cannot post anything on social media related to studio projects or promotion, meaning that an actor can still post a personal selfie freely, but will not be posting about their upcoming film or show.

Speaking at panels: Actors are barred from speaking at panels or conventions, aligning with the notes regarding project promotion. This is the reason why so many studios’ Comic-Con presence shrank drastically this year because they were anticipating forcing their actors into a strike and tried to minimize their appearances.

Activities Permitted by the Strike

Network code productions: Many television productions are designated under the union’s Network Code; this includes shows like daytime soap operas, “Jeopardy!”, and other variety television shows.

Commercials: Commercials are covered by a separate contract from the one between SAG and the AMPTP, so they are allowed to proceed.

Corporate productions: Any industrial, training, or corporate use films are permitted by the SAG agreements.

Audio work: Recording work for audiobooks, voice work for video games, and any language dubbing, and appearing on personal podcasts are permitted.

Waived productions: Independent productions (indie films) not affiliated with the AMPTP studios are allowed to apply for interim agreements to use SAG actors. In addition, certain low-budget and ultra-low-budget films are allowed to proceed as well.

How Do Influencers Play Into This?

As stated above, this is the first actor’s strike in over 40 years, placing the process in somewhat uncharted territory. As marketing dries up with actors not attending press events, red carpet premieres, and more, studios have now begun to search for a group to fill that promotional gap: influencers. However, if you are someone who is approached by a studio to partake in that promotion, doing so would be a bad idea.

First, following the studios is effectively crossing a picket line; the entire point of the actors not promoting the films is to exert their agency and importance to the creative process. Second, the SAG strike is effective for not only current SAG members, but anyone who wants to join SAG in the future.

The Bottom Line

Under the pre-existing agreements, writers and actors have not been compensated fairly for their work as the primary entertainment destination has shifted from cable to streaming. In the confusion of the transition, studio executives have pocketed millions year after year while not sharing that success with the creatives who actually made the work. Furthermore, they’re also looking to cut human voices out of the process entirely, outsourcing the essential purpose of art to artificial intelligence, excluding writers and scanning actors’ likenesses for ownership in perpetuity while being paid a single day’s work.

You may be thinking that if the conflict over fair pay has reached such a drastic impasse, it must be demanding a pretty significant chunk of the studios’ bottom line, right? Maybe a quarter of their gross revenue, even 50%?

It’s less than one percent. Studios are stonewalling against the idea of paying their workers, the creatives actually making the art people are consuming, a livable wage over less than a percent of their annual revenue. Even before the actors helped turn up the heat against the AMPTP, it was estimated that the writer’s strike was costing the studios $30 million per day. With that amount of money flying out the window, it seems that maybe, just maybe, it might be easier and cheaper to just pay your artists.