Bryan Cranston Tells Bob Iger ‘Our Jobs Will Not Be Taken Away’ by AI in Rousing Speech: You Will Not ‘Take Away Our Dignity’
By Joe Otterson
Bryan Cranston delivered a fiery speech at a SAG-AFTRA strike rally in Times Square on Tuesday, which included a message directed at Disney head Bob Iger. “We’ve got a message for Mr. Iger,” Cranston said from the stage of the “Rock the City for a Fair Contract” rally. “I know, sir, that you look [at] things through a different lens. We don’t expect you to understand who we are. But we ask you to hear us, and beyond that to listen to us when we tell you we will not be having our jobs taken away and given to robots. We will not have you take away our right to work and earn a decent living. And lastly, and most importantly, we will not allow you to take away our dignity! We are union through and through, all the way to the end!”
Watch an excerpt from the speech below Cranston began his remarks by saying that there is one thing that all the guilds and the AMPTP fundamentally agree on: “Our industry has changed exponentially.” “We are not in the same business model we were even 10 years ago,” he said. “And yet, even though they admit that is the truth in today’s economy, they are fighting us tooth and nail to stick to the same economic system that is outmoded, outdated! They want us to step back in time. We cannot and we will not do that.” Cranston was one of a number of stars who took the stage to address a crowd of hundreds of SAG-AFTRA members and union supporters at the rally, with others including Steve Buscemi, Wendell Pierce, Christian Slater, Christine Baranski, Stephen Lang, and Titus Burgess. They were joined onstage by fellow actors Michael Shannon, BD Wong, Brendan Fraser, Jessica Chastain, Matt Bomer, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Corey Stoll, and more. Burgess decided to forego a speech, instead singing a section of the song “Take Me to the World” from “Sondheim On Sondheim.” Baranski told the crowd “We will not live under corporate feudalism” while also praising the background actors on shows like “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight,” saying that she attended the rally to speak for them and demand they get fair treatment under any new contract. Slater then spoke about how his father, a fellow SAG member, received support from the union after mental illness and later cancer left him unable to work. Later on in the rally, “The Bear” star Liza Colón-Zayas told the audience that she has been a union member since 1994 and “struggled for 30 years to finally get here, only to find that my residuals have dwindled exponentially.” She then paraphrased Snoop Dogg by saying “We the artists, our gripe is that we deliver in high numbers, in major numbers. And yet, where the f— is my money?”
That’s an interesting take. I don’t see it as a pot calling kettle black situation, rather as the a-listers helping the less lucky majority. It seems to me as solidarity. I think a-list actors deserve the money they get - they’re the top of the top and they must sacrifice their anonymity, they can’t live a normal private life anymore. The important thing here is the less known actors (and every worker, really) should be paid a proper wage that’s enough for a comfortable life.
100% I agree. The core issue is that every worker should be paid their fair wage and of course there is going to be wage disparity because skills and experience are across a spectrum, but people should feel they are compensated justly for their time and efforts. No matter what, this needs to happen.
I don’t totally agree that a-list actors deserve what they get though. There’s been numerous cases where B list actors have outshone A listers or have done so well that they get become A-listers whereas A listers have thrown in the performance for a paycheck.
If that’s the case, you could make the same claim about CEOs. Being a ceo is not easy, it’s literally changing your life so that you slave day in and out for a company and their shareholders. Whoever disagrees with this has not as much as smelt leadership at a big company (Fortune 500 for example). I work with VPs constantly and have seen their schedules and grind first hand. It isn’t trivial. Would there be exceptions to either side? Absolutely. But, it’s also disingenuous to not look at the realities of a movie making project, with set budgets, which again a lot of these actors eat up.
I want workers and unions to voice their concerns and they shouldn’t have to rely somebody else like an A-list actor and their ill formed opinions about things to contribute to the discussions. We should stop celebrity worship and starting disregarding their opinions because they are just actors. Leave it to the people and parties involved. If they truly care about a cause, they should setup non-profits and advertise those, which they do, to their credit. Making wild claims about AI and simplifying the situation by patronize a cause isn’t the way to go about it.
Realistically, there isn’t a “correct” answer here and it’s all just a discussion. :-)