Stephen Amell: “I do not support striking”
Arrow, Heels star becomes the highest-profile actor to speak out against the current actor's strike.
- Published by David Knox
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US actor Stephen Amell (Arrow, Heels) has become the highest-profile star to speak out against the current SAG-AFTRA strike.
Amell, a union member, spoke during a Q&A with fans at Galaxycon in North Carolina.
“I support my union, I do. And I stand with them. I do not support striking. I don’t. I think that it is a reductive negotiating tactic,” Amell said. “I find the entire thing incredibly frustrating. I think the thinking as it pertains to shows — like the show that I’m on that premiered last night — I think it’s myopic.”
Amell played the lead role of Oliver Queen on superhero series Arrow from 2012–2020 and has the lead role of Jack Spade on Heels, which screens in Australia on Stan.
According to Variety, an overwhelming 98% of SAG-AFTRA members voted in favour of the strike.
The SAG-AFTRA strike is approaching its third week with no end in sight.
5 Responses
As usual, this all about the money, which is understandable especially for a fickle egocentric industry like TV entertainment, the studios will be testing the contractual limits. Actors want to make up for the erosion of residuals payments, streaming services don’t pay actors for each time an episode of a show or movie is viewed, they are paid a smaller amount to have the product available on the platform, so actors earn less for streaming work. This is interesting, actors usually need to audition, especially those who aren’t big stars, if they get the part they sign contracts, the terms and conditions are made clear to them then. The popularity of streaming is recent, so is still a learning curve for studio contract actors, and I’m sure studio CEO’s as well, studio’s are now earning less profits and need a lot more products to sell. Star actors claim to receive a residual of 1 cent for popular shows like This is Us, instead they want a share of the revenue, which is rejected.
Classic American attitude. Thank goodness the next generation is starting to wake up to what we in Australia have known for a while re: workers’ rights.
Stephen Amell may have a point, as there is a lot of talk in the US about Channels like ABC doing more simulcasts of the upcoming NFL Season (starts September 7) with their sister cable channel ESPN, with also ones like NBC talking of doing the same with WWE Monday Night RAW and Tuesday Night NXT. Plus with most having streaming sites like those two with Disney+ and Peacock, there are also options they’re talking about of showing repeats of some of the more popular shows on Broadcast TV, so the bargaining chip the Actors have is not as strong as it might otherwise have been in years gone by as they do have more options to fill timeslots.
The time of year that they are coming into is going to make it interesting as there are the traditional breaks they give shows looking as well. Like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas when a lot of shows stop until January, for instance take like an NCIS which last year ended December 5 and resumed January 9 with 1 an dtwo breaks prior to that.
I hope this strike ends soon. And everyone involved should go back to the negotiating table and sort this out.
How could he think striking is a “reductive negotiating tactic” when all the evidence I’ve seen in reality suggests after strike action is taken the pay offer on the table gets better than it was before the strike?