The icons have arrived on the SAG-AFTRA picket lines.
On day five of the actors strike, award-winning actresses Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin attended the strike at Netflix. Last month, Fonda and Tomlin also appeared on the picket lines in support of the Writers Guild of America.
As an industry veteran who has worked with many of the top industry execs through her career (and was once married to media mogul Ted Turner), Fonda implored the studio heads to see reason. “I think that they need to listen to us,” the 80 for Brady star told The Hollywood Reporter. “They have to agree to come back to the negotiating table and be reasonable, because what we’re asking for is reasonable. Their refusal to negotiate these things is really bad.”
Frequent collaborators and longtime friends, Fonda and Tomlin drew a crowd as they walked up and down Sunset Boulevard with their fellow union members. They were also joined by their Grace and Frankie co-star June Diane Raphael, who walked with the actresses arm-in-arm.
Actress and activist Jane Fonda, center in dark jacket, and her “9 to 5” co-star Lily Tomlin, right, joined by the 1980 film’s screenwriter Patricia Resnick, left in white jacket, cheer during a “Striking 9 to 5” picket line in front of Netflix headquarters, in Hollywood on Thursday.
Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
“Netflix made a huge amount of profit this last quarter,” Fonda told a group of gathered reporters. “Have you seen the houses they live in? Have you seen the vacations they take? I don’t know about Netflix, but just in general.”
She continued, “Income inequality has never been greater since the Gilded Age. … And that’s why unions are so important. That’s why there’s a real rise in strikes and unionization in all different sectors. And what we’re fighting for here, it’s really for all the workers in all the sectors. We have to stand together and we have to make unions stronger.”
As one of the first acting icons to publicly hit the picket line, Tomlin noted the importance of showing their support to the guild. “For our fellow actors, it means a lot that we come out,” the Emmy winner told THR. “I mean, we want to anyway. You don’t know whether to slip in and be cool, or to come in and make it known. But you want to get press, you want to get attention, and so we do.”
The SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes come at a critical time in the industry, making history as the first double strike since 1960. As for how these events will impact the future of Hollywood at large, Tomlin noted that “it’s pretty tenuous.” She added, “I worry about the whole industry. I worry about the country. Believe me, I worry about the globe. What are we gonna do? What if Trump gets in again?”
