Meredith Stiehm Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America West are among more than 20 labor organizations lobbying for passage of a bill pending in the California legislature that would make striking workers in the state eligible for unemployment benefits, as they are in New York and New Jersey.

WGA West President Meredith Stiehm, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and SAG-AFTRA national board members Frances Fisher and Shari Belafonte joined hundreds of striking writers and actors on the picket line today outside the main gate of Fox Studios in Century City.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler will join striking actors and writers on the picket line Thursday morning at Fox Studios in Los Angeles. On Tuesday, she joined picketers outside Netflix offices in New York City. “When we fight together, we win together. And we won’t stop fighting until workers have a fair contract!” she tweeted the other day.

Meredith Stiehm, seeking reelection to a second term as president of the WGA West, told her members today that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers’s only option to end the ongoing Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes is “to make a fair deal for writers and actors – one that shares the wealth with the people who create it.” She vowed, however, that once the strike is over, the guild and the studios will return to being “partners” once again.

Yes, there’s a writers strike going on, but the WGA West is also conducting an officer and board election, and the candidates, though they all support the strike, are expressing a wide range of other concerns in statements they’ve posted on the guild’s election site.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Meredith Stiehm will seek a second two-year term as president of WGA West in the fall election, and the other top officials of the guild will also seek reelection. Justine Bateman, the writer-director and former “Family Ties” star, is running for a spot on the WGA West board. Bateman has become outspoken on the need for tight regulation of artificial intelligence. The guild announced its preliminary list of nominees on Wednesday. Stiehm, who has been active in both the agency campaign and the current strike, will run against challenger Rich Talarico, a “Key and Peele” writer who has faulted the guild for not doing more to fight back against the release of free clips of the show on YouTube.

The Writers Guild of America West is holding officer and board elections in the middle of its ongoing strike, which is now in its 51st day. Incumbent president Meredith Stiehm is seeking reelection and will face off against Rich Talarico – both of whom were selected by the guild’s nominating committee.

The WGA Strong March and Rally for a Fair Contract has kicked off in LA with thousands of members of the guild including Damon Lindelof and Boots Riley taking to the parks and streets.

pic.twitter.com/5UJ3Ddm0TkTV writer Tom Smuts, who is married to WGA president Meredith Stiehm, said he was there when the incident occurred.“In the past five weeks coordinating production pickets in Los Angeles and Georgia, no one else has treated us like that,” he tweeted. “And we in the WGA and Teamsters will stay here in solidarity – in Los Angeles, New York, New Mexico, Georgia and wherever else we need to be – until our labor and dignity are respected again.”A Lionsgate spokesperson told TheWrap that the company takes “acts of intimidation and threats of violence seriously” and that they are investigating the incident “thoroughly.”“As we continue to investigate, we have sent home the individual involved,” the studio added. A WGA spokesperson told TheWrap it is “working closely with members who were endangered during this incident to hold this individual accountable.”“Workers should not be threatened with physical harm when exercising their right to publicly protest and picket against unfair wages and working conditions,” the guild said.

A day of picketing the set of the Starz/Lionsgate series BMF in Atlanta turned dangerous for WGA writers Brian Egeston and Gabriel Alejandro Garza. Egeston claimed in a series of tweets Thursday afternoon, accompanied by photos, that BMF line producer Ian Woolf, driving an SUV, pointed the vehicle at Egeston “as though it were a weapon and slammed the breaks within six feet of writers.”

behind only Simon Property Group, which was among the 1.5% of companies who asked shareholders to weigh in on executive compensation packages having rejected the “Say on Pay” proposals.The pay packages included total compensation for co-CEO Ted Sarandos, former co-CEO Reed Hastings and Greg Peters, who was elevated from COO to co-CEO earlier this year. In 2022, Hastings earned $51.1 million in total compensation last year while Sarandos brought in $50.3 million and Peters received $28.1 million. Last week’s rare dissent came days after WGA West president Meredith Stiehm sent an open letter to Netflix and Comcast shareholders urging them to reject the pay proposals ahead of the votes, pointing to the intensifying impact of the guild’s strike, which recently entered into its second month.

WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser issued a clarion call to members and supporters earlier today.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In a symbolic rebuke of Netflix’s top executives, company shareholders voted against approving the compensation packages of leaders including co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. At the streamer’s June 1 annual shareholders meeting, investors failed to approve the proposed exec pay packages for 2023. But the vote was a non-binding “say on pay” measure, meaning Netflix’s board can disregard the result. The vote came after the WGA had urged investors to vote against Netflix’s exec compensation measures in a letter Tuesday. “While investors have long taken issue with Netflix’s executive pay, the compensation structure is more egregious against the backdrop of the strike,” WGA West president Meredith Stiehm wrote in the letter to Netflix shareholders.

1.5% of companies who asked shareholders to weigh in on executive compensation packages having rejected the pay proposals this year. The rejection comes just days after WGA West President Meredith Stiehm sent an open letter to Netflix and Comcast shareholders calling on them to reject the pay packages in the impending vote.“Netflix’s content pipeline has been blocked, with dozens of projects that were in development or ordered to series as of May 1st unable to move forward until WGA negotiations conclude,” Stiehm wrote in the letter to Netflix shareholders.

Netflix shareholders declined to support a proposal affirming the pay packages for top executives during a vote at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.

The leaders of the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE and the Teamsters have issued a “joint statement of solidarity” with the Directors Guild in its final scheduled week of contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, saying that they “stand alongside our sisters, brothers, and kin in the DGA in their pursuit of a fair contract.” Their statement comes on the 30th day of the ongoing WGA strike and 21 days after the DGA began its contract talks with the AMPTP.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor In its heyday, “ER” would keep about 75 background actors on hand per episode to be called up as needed to fill out scenes in hospital corridors and whatnot. On Tuesday, about 75 “ER” alumni filled the sidewalks outside the show’s old studio on Olive Avenue in Burbank. Writers, actors and crew members who worked on the beloved NBC drama series rallied behind the Writers Guild of America on Day 29 of the strike called against Hollywood’s major employers. Many of those who gathered for the “ER” reunion-themed picket on the day after the Memorial Day holiday weekend were emotional about what “ER” represented in their professional careers. It’s an apt symbol for the WGA strike because “ER” is the kind of long-running scripted series that television networks don’t seem to make anymore.

WGAE Career Longevity Salon, a group of writers over the age of 50 within the WGAE have shown a presence as well, especially through co-leader Courtney Simon, who spoke on camera in a video posted to Twitter.“We’re here today picketing ‘The View,’ an ABC show that is still continuing to be written even though we are on strike,” Simon said in video you can watch below. “We are gonna make noise along with everyone else.

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Writers Guild of America is opening up a new front against the studios as its strike continues, as WGA West President Meredith Stiehm sent an open letter to Netflix and Comcast shareholders calling on them to reject the pay packages for those companies’ top executives that are up for a vote. Netflix is set to have its annual shareholders meeting on June 1, with Comcast, parent company of NBCUniversal, holding its shareholder meeting on June 7.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Los Angeles unions rallied on Friday evening in a show of support for the Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike for the last four weeks. The unions — representing hotel workers, teachers and state employees — shared the stage across from Crypto.com Arena in downtown L.A. with representatives from the Hollywood guilds. “It’s going to be a hot labor summer,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, executive director of SAG-AFTRA. “Your fight is our fight. Our fight is your fight. We are all in this together.” SAG-AFTRA has called a strike authorization vote as it looks to gain leverage for its negotiations, which begin on June 7. The SAG-AFTRA contract expires on June 30.

The Writers Guild of America West received the most robust support from their sister unions in Los Angeles at the “Unions Strike Back” Rally on Friday evening.

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros Discovery promised to give writers and directors proper credit on its Max streaming service, but don’t expect the fix to happen anytime soon.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher has told her members that as the union prepares for its upcoming contract negotiations, which start June 7: “We must focus on modernizing our outdated and conservative contract. It is essential that we reshape our agreement to better reflect the new digital and streaming business model that is rapidly changing our industry.”

Angelique Jackson SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher had a sobering message for Hollywood’s major studios as she joined a WGA picket line outside Paramount Pictures on Monday afternoon. “They feel like this strike is a strike for everybody in the industry,” Drescher said of SAG-AFTRA members and the WGA’s labor action. Drescher, who was elected SAG-AFTRA president in September 2021, marched arm in arm with Writers Guild of America West president Meredith Stiehm in a show of solidarity, joining a coalition of a few hundred members from each guild who were picketing outside Paramount starting at 9 a.m. PT as week two of the WGA strike began.

SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher joined members of her guild marching in solidarity with Writers Guild of America members Monday on the picket lines in front of the entrance to Paramount Pictures’ backlot.Amid this display of solidarity, Drescher is preparing with SAG-AFTRA to begin talks on their own new contract, and she is signaling that actors need major change in Hollywood just as much as writers.“We can’t keep building on a contract that was developed in the 1980s,” Drescher told TheWrap. “I’m hoping that we go in with a new perspective, a different portal to enter the conversation just as we did with other talks that we were successful in resolving.

On the seventh day of the Writers Guild of America’s strike against Hollywood studios, guild leaders from both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, including actors union president Fran Drescher, hit the picket lines at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles.

SAG-AFTRA, which starts its contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on June 7, is in “the same boat” with the Writers Guild as it strikes for a fair contract, SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told a cheering crowd Wednesday night at the WGA strike rally at the Shrine Auditorium.

Writers Guild of America leaders are saying Monday night that the guild was forced to go on strike at midnight PT because their proposals to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on core contract issues “fell on deaf ears.”

As the Writers Guild of America’s negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is about to enter the final week before their contract expires, both sides are hopeful it won’t take a strike to get a deal done. But the WGA’s long battle with the talent agencies showed it can reach agreements with even the most intractable of mega-companies.