Fascinating article, with numerous examples where significant characters make trivial residuals on hit shows with significant streaming runs.
It also has implications in terms of explaining why kids of people who work in the industry are working in the industry. If you’ve got parents in LA and NY and they can help support you, you’re more likely to hang in a business that’s not actually paying a living wage.
It gives a different lens on Mica Burton’s appearance in Picard season three as a recurring character for example.
Burton, the daughter of the “Star Trek” star LeVar Burton, tweeted about how little she got paid when she appeared in five episodes of “Star Trek: Picard” earlier this year.
In response to a thread regarding misconceptions about the union, Mica wrote: “Please read this thread. I said before, there is no way I could survive as a working actor if I didn’t have my 100 other side hustles. Yes, I was on Star Trek. I also do not qualify for SAG health insurance and was paid almost the same fee my dad was paid for Roots back in 1977.”
I am in no way defending actors’ pay rates here but it’s wrong to distill their work down to just days they get paid. You don’t just show up on set, get the script, and start filming…
If they’re required to be somewhere and do something, they get paid. That’s what a job is about. If they have to be at a reading, paid. If they have to dry run with the crew, paid. If they have to wait around and fluff themselves for 6 hours waiting to shoot, paid. Sure, they probably read and practice on their own time, which they have a LOT of considering 4 days a month. But even as a welder, I think about work stuff in my off time too. I just have to actually do it for work a lot more often.
Well then where does your 4 day claim come from? You can’t do all those things in 4 days a month.
To your job point, I think about work in my free time, too. But our work remains much more similar day-to-day, we don’t need to *practice" in our off-time for each new job. That’s very different to being an irreplaceable part of a movie so unless your an expert in a very niche industry, you and I are replaceable at work. We may be great at our jobs but if we get hit by a bus, our bosses would hire new employees next week. They have to practice, train, learn new skills, etc.
At the end of the day, if a movie could not be made without the cooperation of the artists, those artists deserve a bigger piece of the pie than they’re getting. What do the executives who is completely disconnected from the production bring to the table to deserve such a high percentage of the profits?
Did you not read the article?
“And assuming you work four days a month – we’re talking $1800 for a months work, and you live in New York City. That doesn’t make rent.”
Direct quote from the article where one of the orange is the new black actors talking about their pay.
Maybe we should call in someone with a bit more first-hand knowledge like our favorite Lemmy user TotallyNotMargotRobbie (I don’t know how to tag people though)