Actress Haley Atwell, co-star of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, has said that Hollywood has become “an industry on its knees” as writers and actors strike for better pay and benefits.
Atwell gave her diagnosis on the film industry, which has been crippled by the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike and the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) strike, when speaking at the London Equity actor’s rally last Friday. She quoted research from Deadline when saying that “87% of SAG-AFTRA members don’t earn enough to qualify for health insurance.”
“There is an illusion that if you are seen on telly, then you’re fine, but for most people, that is not the case,” she said. “This is not an industry that is thriving. It is an industry on its knees.”
Equity is the U.K. equivalent of SAG. The rally included other performers such as Succession star Brian Cox. While some Equity stars have expressed solidarity with SAG, U.K. anti-trade union laws state that “SAG-AFTRA members currently working under an Equity U.K. collective bargaining agreement should continue to report to work.”
Despite that, Equity General Secretary Paul Fleming told Deadline “we are not going to have the U.K. used as a backdoor to undermine SAG-AFTRA’s dispute.”
At the rally, actor Brian Cox said that the SAG strike will “affect British Equity far worse than it will probably affect SAG-AFTRA.”
David Oyelowo, Hayley Atwell, Brian Cox, Simon Pegg and Golda Rosheuvel during a rally in Leicester Square on July 21, 2023. (Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
“We are at the thin end of a really horrible wedge,” he said as he addressed attendees. “SAG is an excellent union, but in the U.S., we don’t have a national health service, so what is important to SAG actors is health and they need that. That’s why they need their residuals.”
Brian Cox tells Deadline "the great thing about this profession is that we are all brothers and sisters"
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) July 21, 2023
He is standing in solidarity with the #Actorsstrike at the Equity rally in London pic.twitter.com/5fyBUuclSA
Selma actor David Oyelowo echoed Cox’s sentiments.
“The gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in our industry is widening at an alarming rate. The business has continued to evolve and the means of remunerating the people who actually make the stuff isn’t catching up with the evolution,” he said.
Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
