BURBANK, Calif. − Warner Bros. Studios was swarmed Friday by a sea of actors, armed with picket signs as they marched up and down the sidewalks on their SAG-AFTRA union’s first day of a strike.
Michael James Lazar was one of them.
Lazar, 37, a member of SAG-AFTRA who pursued acting professionally in 2010 after performing in theater at college, has built a steady career over the years, appearing in guest and co-star roles on hit shows like “How to Get Away with Murder,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “This Is Us” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and working with stars such as Viola Davis, Ellen Pompeo and Seth MacFarlane. He started the process of joining the union more than a decade ago, first by doing work as an extra, or background actor. A small role in a 2016 episode of CBS’ “Criminal Minds” earned him a SAG card.
Many actors would kill for that kind of starry career, but even Lazar says he still doesn’t make enough to support himself solely by acting. In his best year, Lazar estimates he made about $40,000 to $45,000 from acting, including royalty checks from past roles. Many SAG-AFTRA members do not even make $26,470 a year, the minimum required to meet the eligibility threshold for health insurance through the union.
“We have a 1% too, and the 1% are the Denzels, the Brad Pitts, the Johnny Depps. They’re a rare breed,” Lazar says, adding that middle-class working actors like him represent the majority of the union’s 160,000 members.
“We work. We do guest-starring roles, co-starring roles here and there, but we still have to have a day job,” he says.
For Lazar, the No. 1 issue at stake in the strike is the amount of money actors receive in those royalty payments, known as residuals. These are the checks actors get in the mail whenever a show in which they have a role runs in syndication or on another platform.
Many actors rely on residuals to supplement their income until their next job arrives, but in the streaming era, those payments have plummeted, SAG-AFTRA says. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents major studios, claimed as the strike began that it offered the union “historic pay and residual increases” as well as a “groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses,” another contentious issue. (The AMPTP said it also offered deals regarding pension and health contributions, auditions and series option periods, which the union rejected.)
Lazar says he too is concerned about artificial intelligence and its potential to replace actors’ work, which is also a thorny issue among Writers Guild of America members, who’ve been on strike since May 2.
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“We’ve been out here supporting the writers because that threatens their job, but also AI and the influx in using computer generated software could potentially have that same effect on us in the future,” Lazar says. “We’re out here looking towards the future, and we’re saying that this cannot happen, and we won’t stand for it to happen.”
As the strike continues, he plans to drive for the Lyft rideshare service and work as a brand ambassador to supplement his income. His wife works at a corporate job, which will also help support his household for the duration of the strike.
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Although he’s disappointed to go without auditions and work for however long the strike lasts, Lazar says he’s willing to make the sacrifice in order to ensure higher pay and better job security.
Besides, actors are already accustomed to long periods without work.
“I’m not stressed,” he says. “We’re actors, so actors always have some kind of hustle, some kind of side job. … I don’t think we’re worried about that so much as we’re worried about getting back to making a living wage doing what we love to do. … This is nothing for us. We need this. This is pivotal for us.”
