WGA Offers Support For SAG-AFTRA As Talks Restart: “Solidarity Forever”

SAG-AFTRA is set to sit down with the studios today to restart talks on a deal for the actors.

The WGA has offered its support to its on-screen brethren.

The guild has called on the studios to negotiate a “fair” deal that actor members “need and deserve”.

The WGA also noted that such a deal shouldn’t be “patterned” on its own deal, but rather focused on the actors’ own needs.

“The WGA West and East call upon the AMPTP and its member companies to negotiate the fair deal that members of SAG-AFTRA need and deserve. SAG-AFTRA has been on strike for more than 70 days as it fights for a contract that allows performers to share in the value of the work they help create. Rather than engage in the traditional AMPTP tactic of pushing a deal on SAG-AFTRA that is patterned on our own tentative agreement or any other industry deal, a strategy which has already caused considerable delay and suffering, the companies must make a deal that addresses the needs of performers. WGA members will continue to show up on picket lines and support SAG-AFTRA until they reach that deal. Solidarity forever,” it said in a statement.

It comes as SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP sit down for the first time in over two and a half months, following the expiration of their deal at the end of June and its two-week extension.

AMPTP chief Carol Lombardini will be joined on the employers’ side today by NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley, Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Disney’s Bob Iger at the SAG-AFTRA offices on Wilshire’s Miracle Mile with SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher; National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland; and Ray Rodriguez, SAG-AFTRA’s longtime Chief Contracts Officer, among those on the other side of the table.