Leaders of the Hollywood union SAG-AFTRA — representing 160,000 television and movie actors — voted to strike at noon on Thursday after they couldn’t come to an agreement with the studios.
Announcing the strike Thursday afternoon, actress Fran Drescher, who serves as the president of SAG-AFTRA, said: ‘We demand respect! You cannot exist without us!
‘What happens to us is important,’ she added. ‘What’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor.
‘When employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors who make the machine run, we have a problem.
‘The jig is up, we demand respect,’ she said.
As word got out, actors around the world walked off sets and premieres, including the Oppenheimer cast in London who left the premiere in ‘solidarity’ with the actors’ strike.
Jamie Lee Curtis also posted an image on Instagram saying:
‘It looks like it’s time to take down the masks and pick up the signs.’
This is the biggest walkout in four decades. Actors will be on the picket line starting on Friday.