Deadline’s Strike Talk Podcast With Billy Ray & Todd Garner Week 6: What DGA Deal, SAG-AFTRA Strike Authorization Mean For Hollywood; Union Talk With Ro Khanna & Becca Balint

With the news that SAG/AMPTP negotiations could push into next week, international acting unions are for the most part taking a cautious approach to supporting a potential actors strike.

EXCLUSIVE: After it emerged that over 300 actors had written to SAG-AFTRA leadership that they are “prepared to strike” if the guild doesn’t “get all the way there” during talks with the studios, the number of actors signing the letter has more than tripled overnight.

Oscar winners Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and over 400 other actors have addressed SAG-AFTRA leaders in an open letter — and are threatening to strike if a harder line is not drawn regarding contact deals.   

More than 300 actors including many big names have signed a letter to SAG-AFTRA leadership urging them to take a hard line in the negotiations for a new film and TV contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

More than 300 actors have signed a letter addressed to the SAG-AFTRA Leadership and Negotiating Committee.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International If you ask most people in the U.K. industry how business is going right now, they’ll likely tell you it’s been agonizingly “slow.” It’s meant to be boom time for production, but this summer, the U.S. writers strike combined with a cost of living crisis is brutally squeezing unscripted and scripted projects. This week, as the clock ticks away on negotiations between American actors union SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood’s collective bargaining agent, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the prevailing thought will be: is all of this about to get much worse? A number of British actors Variety has spoken to say they’ve yet to hear from local actors’ union Equity with any guidance about their situation. That’s likely because it’s being worked out in real time. Paul W. Fleming, general secretary for Equity, has been in Los Angeles for discussions with SAG-AFTRA, which is optimistic about its negotiations with the AMPTP. (He’s also visiting New York to meet with theater union Actors’ Equity.)

Jennifer Garner is opening up about fame and what she misses the most about her life before finding stardom.In a roundtable conversation with Claire Danes, Emma D’Arcy and Melanie Lynskey for, Garner chimed in after D'Arcy (who identifies with they/them pronouns) shared that their «day-to-day is broadly unchanged» after landing the role of Rhaenyra Targaryen on, HBO's spinoff.D'Arcy said advice from Emilia Clarke proved immensely beneficial. But while they wouldn't divulge the piece of advice, D'Arcy said «that wig» in  was a «blessing» because «people don't recognize me.» They added, «I feel that the ability to observe others and not be the observed is so fundamentally important to our job.

Deadline’s Strike Talk podcast is now at Week 8, as we complete a stretch in which the standoff between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers passed the 50-day mark, halfway to the 100-day dispute that decimated Hollywood in 2007 and the 253-day dispute of 1988.

Billy Ray is back for the sixth installment of Strike Talk, a podcast that began with the start of the Writers Guild standoff. Falling on the 50th day of the strike, this episode is groundbreaking, in a Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s HAL meets James Cameron’s The Terminator kind of way. As he will explain in the podcast, Ray was able to make it so that he could have a back and forth verbal conversation with the AI that is a major bone of contention for the WGA in its dispute with AMPTP signatories. While the voice of AI seems amiable enough, it makes clear that as its technology and learning abilities become more sophisticated, fears that it could be used to lessen the number of writers coming up in the creative ecosystem by the use of cost-effective technology is validated in technicolor. Below-the-liners, writers and actors and even studio heads are expendable. Ray, who wrote the classic ‘I am the captain now’ line in Captain Phillips, unveils a new and potentially scarier skipper here, one that might give studio chiefs pause to consider what they’re unleashing to save a few bucks. Click below to listen.

EXCLUSIVE: Independent films that found it impossible to get bonded or financed this spring and summer with a potential SAG-AFTRA strike looming — as well as new projects that were looking to start after June 30 — now have a shot at moving ahead as the union proceeds with interim agreements.

Coleen Nolan has shared a heart-warming new snap of her family in a tribute to her daughter Ciara for her birthday, and her ex-husband Ray Fensome was there.The Loose Women star grinned as she posed next to her grown-up daughter as they celebrated her special day, and Ray was on the other side.The rare photo proved the former couple are still able to co-parent as they happily partied and ate cake together in 58 year old Coleen's garden. Wearing a black dress, white crocheted cardigan and her hair in her signature wavy style, Coleen beamed as she showed off a white rectangular birthday cake for her daughter.

The moment the WGA strike started at 12:01 a.m. on May 2, all late-night shows went dark. Many presume that the same is bound to happen with daytime dramas if SAG-AFTRA goes on strike July 1, as those series, similarly, are in continuous, year-round production.

Lady Gaga is one of the most famous celebrities out there. On top of her acclaimed career as a pop star, Mother Monster is also an accomplished TV and movie actress. Her next movie is Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, where she’ll be playing none other than Harley Quinn.

The Television Critics Association has officially cancelled its upcoming summer press tour as the WGA, DGA and SAG-AFTRA are at different points of negotiating new contracts with the AMPTP.

SAG-AFTRA and the studios have begun negotiations for a new film and TV contract. The talks, which got underway Wednesday morning at the Sherman Oaks offices of the studios’ reps the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, come two days after the guild’s members voted 97.9% in favor of authorizing a strike if an acceptable deal isn’t reached by the end of the month.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The membership of SAG-AFTRA has voted overwhelmingly to approve a strike authorization, maximizing the guild’s leverage ahead of negotiations that begin on Wednesday. The guild announced Monday night that 97.91% of the voting members supported the authorization. Turnout was 47.69%. The vote comes as the Writers Guild of America strike enters its sixth week. Many SAG-AFTRA members have already joined WGA members walking the picket lines. The leaders of both guilds have expressed solidarity with each other several times this year. The writers strike has caused a sharp downturn in production, especially in television. If SAG-AFTRA goes on strike, any remaining film and TV production would halt immediately. The union represents 160,000 performers.

SAG-AFTRA, which begins negotiations for a new contract on Wednesday, said today that its bargaining strategy remains unchanged in the wake of the tentative deal made last night by the Directors Guild and the studios.

SAG-AFTRA members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if upcoming contract talks fail to produce a satisfactory agreement by June 30. The vote revealed Monday was 97.91% in favor, with nearly half of eligible members — 47.69% — casting ballots. According to the union, nearly 65% of eligible members voted.

told the Telegraph Friday. “That will come back to haunt them at a certain point,” he said. “They have no cousins that they see, or uncles or aunts, and they don’t see grandparents, except for one.”Carter, 73, also criticized Montecito, Calif., where the exiled royals chose to raise their children on a palatial $14.6 million estate, saying there is “nothing, nothing, nothing to do” in what he called “God’s waiting room.”“It’s a 40-minute drive from LA.

In a defiant clarion call for continued solidarity and endurance as the Writers Guild’s strike enters its second month, WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser says in a new video that the guild’s fight for a fair contract is not one that’s being fought for writers alone, but for the entire labor movement.