Wow! Amid the current SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) & WGA (Writers Guild of America) strikes, ‘Abbott Elementary’ star William Stanford Davis recently showed off his five-cent residual check from an unnamed show he worked on.
Davis, who has been an actor 35 years and a Screen Actors Guild member for 32 years, shocked users on social media after revealing just how crippling the TV and film industry can be for actors, writers, and more, trying to survive off of residual checks from past projects.
As actors and writers have joined forces to strike, for the first time in over 60 years, the 71-year-old veteran actor took to his social media on Friday (July 21) to reveal the meager compensation he received for his work on an unnamed show.
Williams Stanford Davis, who currently portrays custodian “Mr. Johnson” on ABC’s ‘Abbott Elementary‘, began, “I’ve been a screen actor for 35 years. I’ve been in the guild for about 32 years and I’ll let this speak for itself.” Davis chuckled and then held up one the meager checks to his camera, adding, “This is a residual check.”
As he positions the payout towards the camera’s center, viewers can see the SAG-AFTRA-issued check shows a “total gross” payment of $0.05. Davis asks viewers, “Do you see that? Do you believe that? That’s three-cents.”
He added that this is the reason why SAG-AFTRA and WGA members are on strike. He said, “The postage, the paper, everything costs more than that. That’s what they think of us as actors. This is why we’re on strike. On strike for better wages, for better residuals, for a piece of the subscriptions, and to not give into AI. I stand in solidarity with the writers. And we will strike until we get what it is that we need to make a living as actors.”
Captioning the post, Davis wrote, “There ain’t nothing funny about a .03¢ residual check! What are we supposed to do with that? I stand strong with our union as we fight for what’s ours and for the success of the future generations.”
RELATED: ‘Abbott Elementary’ Gets Renewed For Season 3
As we’ve been following, SAG-AFTRA union president, and ‘The Nanny’ actor Fran Drescher announced earlier this month that the board authorized a strike after the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) did not agree to any of their terms during contract negotiations, and would be striking alongside the WGA, who’d been striking for some time ahead.
On Wednesday (July 19), she told CBS News how negotiations had stalled since the strike began. She said, “I wish we would be talking to the other side. We said we’d start talking to them immediately, but they’re punishing us. They don’t want to talk to us, so, oh well, you know, they complained [the strike] is going to shut down the business but they don’t come to the table. … I think stonewalling is their preferred technique. That’s what we are up against.”
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