SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher railed against Disney CEO Bob Iger during an interview with Variety on the picket line outside the Paramount Pictures studio lot.
In a July 13 interview with CNBC’s David Faber of the Sun Valley Conference, Iger said the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikers weren’t “realistic” with their demands.
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“I found them terribly repulsive and disconnected. Positively deaf. I don’t think it served him well,” Drescher said Friday when asked about Iger’s comments. Talk to Variety chief correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister, Drescher continued, “If I was this company, I would lock him behind doors and never let him tell anyone about it because it’s so obvious he has no idea. of what’s really going on in the field with people working hard and not earning the salary he earns at all. High seven figures, eight figures, that’s crazy money they make, and they don’t care if they’re land barons from a medieval era.
Iger gave his Sun Valley interview just hours before Drescher officially called a SAG-AFTRA strike, with a picket beginning July 14.
“It’s very disturbing to me,” Iger said when asked about the labor strikes. “We talked about the disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges we’re facing, the COVID recovery that’s underway, it’s not fully back. This is the worst time in the world to add to this disruption.
Iger continued, “I understand the desire of any labor organization to work on behalf of its members to achieve maximum compensation and to be fairly compensated for the value they deliver. We were able, as an industry, to negotiate a very good agreement with the directors’ guild that reflects the value that directors bring to this great company. We wanted to do the same with the writers, and we would like to do the same with the actors. There’s a level of expectation they have that just isn’t realistic. And they add to the set of challenges that this company is already facing that, frankly, are very disruptive.
Drescher went viral when announcing the SAG-AFTRA strike on July 13 due to her fiery speech in which she condemned Hollywood studios.
“We are the victims here. We are the victims of a very greedy entity,” Drescher said of SAG-AFTRA. “I can’t believe it, quite frankly: how far apart we are on so many things. How [the studios] pleading poverty, that they’re losing money left and right giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It’s disgusting. Shame on them.”
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