Billy Porter is one of the many working actors being affected by the ongoing Hollywood strikes.
As members of both SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America continue to fight for fair contracts, wages, schedules, and much more, the unthinkable is starting to happen: creatives are losing their security.
You may remember last month when the strikes were in their early stages, Deadline reported that an unnamed studio exec didn’t have any plans to negotiate with unions, and that the endgame was “to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” What at first seemed like a cartoonishly evil impossibility is now settling in as a very plausible reality! Because Billy Porter has become the first big name actor to claim he has had to sell his LA home because of the strike!
During an interview Evening Standard last week, the Pose star revealed:
“I have to sell my house because we’re on strike. And I don’t know when we’re gonna go back . The life of an artist, until you make f**k-you money — which I haven’t made yet — is still .”
Omg!
That just shows how unfair contracts and pay can really be, because Billy has been in SO MUCH! He added:
“I was supposed to be in a new movie, and on a new television show starting in September. None of that is happening.”
How sad. The Cinderella star makes clear he isn’t mad at strikers, as he’s joining the battalion. Rather he’s blasting that studio exec and their ilk who would rather see creatives out on the streets than just paying them what they’re worth:
“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.”
He also specifically took aim at Disney CEO Bob Iger, who notoriously condemned the strikes:
“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, except: ‘f**k you.’ that’s not useful, so I’ve kept my mouth shut. I haven’t engaged because I’m so enraged.”
He added:
“In the late ’50s, early ’60s, when they structured a way for artists to be compensated properly through residual , it allowed for the 2 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.”
How messed up! What will it take for studio execs to realize creatives’ value? Poor Billy. Everything he’s saying is spot on!
HOWEVER…
We’d feel derelict in our duties if we didn’t point out something Billy failed to mention in his rant about losing his home: he’s also going through a divorce!
Yes, the actor and his husband, Adam Smith, announced just a month ago that they were splitting up after six years of marriage. And, it must be said, divorces are notoriously expensive and often result in shared homes being sold off.
So sure, of course, we have no doubt the studios’ failure to negotiate a deal after the writers’ and actors’ very reasonable demands is hurting the bank accounts of a lot of folks in the industry. And it likely will cause many to downsize, sadly. All we’re saying is, it’s clearly not the ONLY issue Billy Porter is facing right now.
What are your thoughts, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments down below.
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