Rose Gilbert WPLN News Many supporters brought their own homemade signs.
Over 70 people gathered on Music Row on Monday night for a rally in support of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Union members wore matching shirts, held signs and led supporters — including members of at least two other local unions — in chants, while passing cars honked in encouragement. SAG-AFTRA is an entertainment union that represents actors, as well as other workers ranging from DJs to dancers.
When it comes to acting, your first thought might be Hollywood, or maybe New York City, but there are just over 1,600 SAG-AFTRA members right here in Nashville.
Colette Divine is one them. She’s appeared in TV shows like “Greenleaf” and movies like “The Big Short,” but like most professional actors, she’s not a household name.
“Everyone thinks about the celebrities and movie stars. That’s a very small percent. Every show you watch has an attorney, has the barista, has a secondary person who’s there, or has background actors,” she said.
One of the big issues at the core of this strike is artificial intelligence, or AI.
“What they want to do is take a scan of a background actor, pay them once, and then use that background actor’s image and likeness digitally in perpetuity,” Divine explained.
Basically, studios want to use AI to fill in scenes with images of background actors without having to pay them. That would be disastrous for many actors who depend on those background roles to help pay the bills, Divine explained.
Dwight Turner, a producer and actor who you may have seen as a doctor on “Chicago Fire,” says that this strike has been a long time coming. Streaming completely changed how actors get paid, causing residuals to shrink dramatically and making it harder for most working actors to pay the bills, he explained.
“The people at the top of the studios are getting vast amounts of money, and they’re squeezing it out of everyone else down below,” he said. “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not taking it anymore.”
Turner noted that this strike was a particularly historic labor action. For one thing, the last screen actors’ strike was in 1980. For another, the Writers Guild of America has also been on strike for the past couple of weeks. Those two things haven’t happened at the same time since 1960.
Rose Gilbert WPLN News Regina McCrary has been a member of the union since she was 19.
Of course, this is Music City, and about half of this chapter’s members are more involved with the music industry. Regina McCrary, for example, joined the union when she was 19 after she was hired to hit the road as a backup singer for Bob Dylan.
“(SAG-AFTRA) covers us and protects us and keeps us from being mistreated. And you always get the respect you need when you are a part of a union like this, because look at them,” she said, gesturing to the crowd around her. “I mean, we’re in this boat together.”
Nashville’s chapter is meeting next Wednesday to decide on their next steps.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM