Jamie Lee Curtis doesn’t pretend to know when she thinks the SAG-AFTRA strike will end.
“I have no idea,” the Oscar winner told me Thursday morning at Project Angel Food’s groundbreaking ceremony for The Chuck Lorre Family Foundation Campus in Los Angeles.
However, Curtis says she remains “hopeful” that the actors union and AMPTP can find common ground.”
“I’m hopeful that we can all see all sides. I’m more Switzerland. I’m not a polarized person here. I don’t like the rhetoric on both sides,” she said. “Any settlement means nobody’s happy. So there will be a settlement and not everyone will be happy. I don’t like the them vs. us. The fact that there’s a them and an us bothers me. It’s one industry and I hope that all of the sides can recognize the oneness of our industry, and that we are interdependent, and that AI is not interdependent, that human beings are and at the end of the day our interdependency with each other will prevail.”
Curtis posted a video of a picket line in New York City on Tuesday with a simple caption that reads, “AS LONG AS IT TAKES @sagaftra.”
Sheryl Lee Ralph, a member of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee, was also at the Project Angel Food event.
“Strikes hurt, but you know what? It’s going to get better,” the Emmy-winner said. “And you better be thankful to workers because if it wasn’t for workers, none of us would have a weekend. It was workers who organized that and made that happen.”
While she didn’t mention the studios or networks by name, Ralph said, “Follow the money. When their money runs out, that’s a problem.”
Asked if she’d like to talk to Bob Iger after his controversial remarks about the strikes, Ralph said, “He doesn’t need me to call him. But you know what? If you would have read [Iger’s 2019 memoir, “The Ride of a Lifetime”], you would probably see that Bob Iger had some moments where he was amazing, where he was an amazing man. This right here right now? It’s a learning experience. We can all continue to learn.”
The WGA announced earlier this week that it will meet with the AMPTP on Aug 4 to discuss resuming negotiations. SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP have not met since the actors went on strike on July 14.
