Hollywood is on strike. How will this historic double strike affect the already dwindling numbers of writers of color in television and feature-film writers rooms? And what is the path forward as actors and writers face the challenges of streaming services, mini-rooms and artificial intelligence? First, Our Body Politic guest host Callie Crossley speaks with award-winning television writer Erika Green Swafford about her career, what it’s like to be the only Black woman in a writer’s room and the need for creating spaces for writers of color in TV. Then, TV and feature-film writers Jeane Phan Wong and Sylvia Franklin join Callie for a roundtable breaking down what the strikes are all about, including the day-to-day of being on the picket line.
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This is Our Body Politic. I'm guest host, Callie Crossley, host, commentator for GBH Boston, sitting in for Farai Chideya. On May 2nd, the Writers Guild of America, or WGA, which represents more than 11,000 writers, officially went on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP. And on July 14th, SAG-AFTRA, which represents nearly 160,000 media professionals and entertainers, also went on strike against the AMPTP. It's the first time in 63 years that both the actors and writers unions have been on strike together. The demands from writers and actors are centered around fair compensation, particularly when it comes to streaming services and how emerging tech like A.I. comes into play in TV and film projects. On our show, we're digging into the strikes and taking a closer look as to how they're affecting writers of color and their future in Hollywood. But first, what's it like to break into Hollywood as a Black woman after a major career pivot? Erika Green Swafford is a television executive, story editor, writer and producer. And she's worked on some of the biggest shows on television, ones you've definitely heard of and maybe binge watched, including “How To Get Away With Murder,” “New Amsterdam” and “The Mentalist”. But she didn't always know this was where she'd end up. Today, we're talking with her about her winding path to television and what it's like to walk the picket line with the Writers Guild of America. Welcome to the show, Erika.
Erika Green Swafford [00:02:34] Thanks so much for having me, Callie.
Callie Crossley [00:02:37] So when we talk about your winding path, it's because you've had a very unconventional path to becoming a television writer. What did you think you were going to do when you were in college?
Erika Green Swafford [00:02:46] I knew for sure because I knew when I was probably seven years old I was going to be a chef just like Julia Child. That was my thing. I was going to be famous and be a chef, maybe with better hair than Julia Child. So.
Callie Crossley [00:03:02] All right, so you're. You're going the path of Chef. And where did that lead you initially?
Erika Green Swafford [00:03:06] I went to the hotel school at Cornell University. I went in thinking I was going to come out, create some sort of boutique hotel chain in the Caribbean somewhere and be a hotelier. So I went full hog for it for a while there.
Callie Crossley [00:03:24] And before we go back to take a deeper dive on some of this stuff. Tick off all the jobs you had from there to now.
Erika Green Swafford [00:03:32] Okay. I have been a front office manager of a hotel. I have been a sales manager at a hotel. I have been an assistant at a cable network. I turned into a lower level executive at a cable network. I have been a writer. I have also been a cooking instructor. I have also taught dance classes on the side. There are a lot of, you know, random things that I have done.
Callie Crossley [00:04:03] Okay. All right. Now, you've talked before about starting to transition from your previous career in hospitality to getting an MBA and then to a career in television. So in my mind, I'm trying to think about what made you think as you were really doing well, flourishing in the hospitality field to go toward getting an MBA?
Erika Green Swafford [00:04:24] You know, I thought when I started to go into doing a lot more theater for myself. For example, I did comedy at night. I did improv with a group in Washington, D.C., called Comedy Sports. I knew that the entertainment industry had not only a creative component, but a business component. I decided to apply to grad school because I didn't have any other understanding of other ways to get into the business at that point in time. Like being a writer wasn't even necessarily on my radar. It was just being a creative and being the most creative person I could be within the entertainment industry, whatever that looks like. And so that's why I applied to business school was, well, you know, I'll get the business sense and then I'll also get a lay of the creative land in California. So that's why I applied to the UCLA Anderson School of Management, because I thought I could get a good mix of the two.
Callie Crossley [00:05:23] But to be clear, you didn't really have a specific mission in mind. You were feeling your way.
Erika Green Swafford [00:05:30] Yeah, I was feeling my way along the walls, touching all touching all the bricks in the woodwork and everything. Just trying to figure out what it meant to be in entertainment because it was so opaque.
Callie Crossley [00:05:44] What I think is interesting in your TED talk… and you do have one. You really pay attention to this period of sort of a freeing stream of consciousness as you're trying to figure out, What am I doing? You're wandering here, you're trying on things. As you say, you're touching the walls and you make the point that you should honor this, honor this time, honor your right. You say “thank your shame spiral for its purpose”. What do you mean?
Erika Green Swafford [00:06:14] Yeah. At that point in time, when I was in the middle of a shame spiral and we all hit them at different points in our lives, I couldn't understand why everything wasn't so clear. And then I started to appreciate the beauty within the mess. And I started to hear a potential for myself within that shame spiral by just allowing myself to try things and to fail.
Callie Crossley [00:06:42] Now, you know, what's interesting is that a lot of people have, could have followed the same kind of serial wandering that you did, bumping from here to there trying to find themselves. And they never focus or settle down in a place. They just keep wandering. But as you know. Gandalf wisely said to Frodo in Lord of the Rings, All who wander are not lost. So when did you…
Erika Green Swafford [00:07:06] I’m going to give you snaps. I love a Gandalf reference. Gandalf the White versus Gandalf the Gray.
Callie Crossley [00:07:15] How did you know when it was time to move from unstructured to structured? You're getting the feelings. But when? When did you know the moment was there?
Erika Green Swafford [00:07:24] You know, the moments keep showing up to you. You may not necessarily be aware of the first moment, to be honest. Sort of made the decision while I was working as like a lower level TV executive that I wanted to be more creative in this business. I think as a person who is a Black woman in this country, you just always feel like you need a whole bunch of bona fides so that people won't ask you any questions. And so there was this approach to, well, if I log this many hours on stage, if I get this degree, then then and only then I can make the leap. And so there were probably a lot of opportunities before it. But when I heard about a writing program at Warner Brothers, after I had written pilot scripts, after I had been on stage, after I had, you know, that opportunity met me at a point in time where I had already done a lot of work, like a lot of work. And I wasn't necessarily calling myself a writer, but I was saying, “Well, yeah, I also write on the side. I also perform on the side. I also do these other things.” I said, Oh, well, you know, let me just go on ahead and take a chance. What could it hurt? And it was that moment that turned into a whole different career for me.
Callie Crossley [00:08:51] Take us into the writers room and in specific, your first writers room. What was that like? What were you expecting and what did you encounter?
Erika Green Swafford [00:09:00] My first writer's room was at The Mentalist. It was really cool. It was scary because there is a degree of rhythm that happens where everyone starts to speak a language about how to knit together a story. You might come up with some disparate idea that then suddenly everyone goes, okay, that could work in the context of this show. If we did X, Y, and Z. I was stunned at the ability of people to knit story in the air. They weren't even writing anything on a board. They were literally just sitting there and seeing the acts in their head and going, Yeah, but if you do that here, then you can do that there. But then you need to be in consideration of this. And at that time, I didn't have the dexterity or the understanding, and so I was a lot lost that first first season I was in television. And then also the fact that I was the only Black woman there.
Callie Crossley [00:10:04] That's what I was about to ask you. Where are you now? Were you the only person of color, period, or the only Black person?
Erika Green Swafford [00:10:11] I was the only person of color in the room.
Callie Crossley [00:10:14] Hmm. Hmm. Hmm hmm. So every time you spoke, it felt like it was a big floodlight on you.
Erika Green Swafford [00:10:18] Well, I wouldn't say floodlight, but you do get the sense that. Oh, I feel like I have to speak up for everybody because no one else is in this room, And that is no shade to anybody that I worked with, because they're really lovely individuals and smart and very open to ideas and things like that. But… I felt like I had to continually put my hand up. I called it the Black Girl hand exception where I was like yeah, but. Where I continually needed to to speak up. And even if it wasn't necessarily my experience as a person of a marginalized group, I felt like I needed to, like, plank myself, like a land… human land bridge, to make sure that at least some of the issues of the marginalized got into that room through me.
Callie Crossley [00:11:14] Now, you've spoken a lot about the importance of representation, both on screen and behind the scenes in television. How has that come up most viscerally for you, beyond just that experience you describe?
Erika Green Swafford [00:11:27] Viscerally, There have been exchanges where I have been told, no, that couldn't happen that way by people who are of the majority population. And I'm like, I think you're coming from a place of privilege when you say that. Earlier in my career, I was afraid to speak up about certain things because I didn't want to get blowback. And unfortunately, then the story suffered as a result. As I have moved up in my career now, I am a senior level writer and also just, you know, a more senior level human being on the planet. I let people know how I'm feeling, how your privilege needs to be checked, how my own privilege also needs to be checked in different ways that my blinders don't allow me to, to see that in terms of representation. If you don't have people in the room, it's not going to be reflected in any helpful way.
Callie Crossley [00:12:26] Can you pinpoint a time when your specific contribution as a Black woman writer made a clear difference in the final script?
Erika Green Swafford [00:12:33] I would say my first script with the amazing, incomparable Cicely Tyson and with Viola Davis when she is. Having a moment where she is combing her child's hair and explaining how she's the one that set fire to their house after they have been, unfortunately. Annalise Keating, who is the character played by Viola Davis, had been abused by her uncle, and her mother had no other recourse. And so she burn the house down around this man and it was done while she was scratching up her child's scalp, who was at her most, you know, had her lowest point to date. And that came from my own experience of sitting in between my mom's legs and just having true conversations in that moment. And I wanted to have that reflected between a Black mother and her child on television and on network television. On a Thursday night, people were seeing Ms. Cicely Tyson have that conversation with her child while scratching up her scalp. And it was it's very much a Black experience.
Callie Crossley [00:13:52] How does it make you feel to know that that scene is. well, I know we overuse the word, but it's really iconic, the one that you've described from “How To Get Away With Murder.” I mean, it's become that it's all over the Internet. People refer to it. People are studying it.
Erika Green Swafford [00:14:08] It's a point of pride because as I say to everyone, even though it came from my experience and my experience is decidedly a Black female experience, it is a universal experience because it takes place in the universe. With representation, It's not setting any group as a default, but we all live and we're all doing a lot of the same things. We're just doing it in different ways. But we need to respect and honor that those are valid when they don't come from a majority perspective. And when my nieces and nephews and, you know, I'm old and crotchety and, you know, sitting in the house coat and talking mess 60 years from now, you know, to be able to say, well, yeah, I did that, is decidedly a point of pride.
Callie Crossley [00:15:03] What do you think about improving representation moving forward?
Erika Green Swafford [00:15:07] It has to continue to happen. We're in a landscape where everything is changing. There is this proliferation of platform. So there is no monoculture anymore. You know, if you can remember appointment viewing that happened and we all were watching who shot J.R. that kind of a situation doesn't happen because there are so many different outlets. Which also means that the audience is fragmenting. And if the audience is fragmenting, that means that there are just so many more opportunities to get out there, the fragments of the audience, as opposed to sort of imposing monoculture. And that comes from bringing in disparate communities in front of the camera and behind the camera. There is no reason why in fantasy, we don't have more people who are of marginalized groups being a part of fantasy… because it's fantasy. You know what I mean? Or why can't, you know, there be more Asian folks in space? There are so many other people that exist within the universe that are just as valuable and their stories are just as valuable.
Callie Crossley [00:16:21] Let's talk about craft. What are the tools and approaches you've found that help you as a writer creating shows on television?
Erika Green Swafford [00:16:29] A lot of ear hustling, for sure. Don't be afraid, but if you are near anybody who is a creative, they're probably also taking in you as a person, the way you talk, the way you express your opinion, or you don't express your opinion. So soaking in culture, that's a big thing for me. You know, I love Black culture, so I love soaking in Black culture. But I also go to other cultures and hang out and see how they live, how they approach life. And then for me, trying to figure out what I'm trying to say is kind of like my Northstar, my guiding light.
Callie Crossley [00:17:09] For those of us who don't write television and write for the screen, what are some of the creative approaches and techniques you learn to make a character or make stories come alive for viewers?
Erika Green Swafford [00:17:19] Here's a question. If there is a character that you're interested in and you go, “Oh, this person is hilarious,” well why are they funny? Start thinking about the history of that person. So are they always trying to be funny because they come from a very sad existence? That is a way that you can sort of start to develop character. And how does that come out? When you are developing a story there has always got to be some sort of conflict. And so big conflict is obviously I need to get away from this person before they kill me. It could be as small as this is the last Snickers on planet Earth and I've got to get my hands on it. There needs to be some sort of friction that the character that you're in love with has to undergo. And it's normally that friction is tied to something about that character. So like, if you are looking at a person and you go, okay, as we have built a really funny life of the party, self-loathing, when they get it home, then is there someone who is looking to get at the soft underbelly of that person? And that's the one thing that this person does not want. Then that's obviously something that you need to sort of include, because then that feels like a worthy adversary and then you can get really good conflict out of those two characters. So just always think about opposition.
Callie Crossley [00:18:53] So out here in the world where the rest of us don't write for TV. The lesson, the mantra is show, don't tell. But if you're writing for the screen, you're showing. So you've got that as part of it. So I'm curious, what are some of the lessons you've learned as you were approaching this new craft?
Erika Green Swafford [00:19:13] Sure, definitely say less. I am a chatty person, as you can see, and that translates into the way I start with my writing. It's very chatty. People say a lot of things, but sometimes it doesn't take much. So I call it the Coco Chanel effect. Read through a thing that you're writing and then make the decision as to; Is all of this necessary? Take something away. Whether it's a line of dialog, whether it's an explanation as to how this needs to happen, it is the editing that is the magic of writing, which is in turn rewriting. And so it's just getting down to the simplest version of something is probably going to be your best friend.
Callie Crossley [00:20:08] Okay, Well, let's talk about the writers strike. Writers in Hollywood have been on strike for months now. They're protesting lower pay, less stability, calling out a shift toward gig based jobs that pay less and drawing attention to the effects of streaming like those so-called mini rooms instead of the full writers rooms that you discussed earlier. Have you already felt the impact of these shifts?
Erika Green Swafford [00:20:35] For sure. When I started in this business, I was on network television and the residuals were the reason why I was able to sustain myself. I have seen sort of the change happen where suddenly stringing became a thing and people who are doing the exact same work that I was doing were getting paid so much less.
Callie Crossley [00:21:02] So this is the first time in a long time that it's a double strike with the actors out with the writers.
Erika Green Swafford [00:21:07] Since 1960.
Callie Crossley [00:21:08] So what are you hearing while you're out on the picket line with this double strike, if you will.
Erika Green Swafford [00:21:13] That it's affirming. It's like, yeah, their struggles are similar, but different to ours. But all of our struggles are labor struggles and putting us in a larger context with all sorts of other groups of labor. Yes, it is a craft and it is a skill, but we are also very much a part of the labor union and we are a part of a labor movement. It might feel razzle dazzle and it might feel real sexy because people get to walk red carpets. But it is very much a middle class, blue collar industry for the predominant number of people that are writers and actors. So not to sound, you know, silly, but we're just like everybody else. We are just like everybody else wanting to be valued for what it is that we do.
Callie Crossley [00:22:07] That was Erika Green Swafford television executive story editor, writer and producer.
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Callie Crossley [00:22:32] For those of us not in show business, being a screenwriter for television or film may seem like a lucrative fantasy similar to the ones we see on the small or silver screen. But in reality, the lives of the majority of TV and film writers are a grind. Looking for the next opportunity. Jumping from project to project and hoping to land a job with stability and staying power. And now, huge advances in technology have upended how movies and TV shows are made and sold. And writers and actors say those changes make it easier to take advantage of their work. On this week's roundtable, we have two members of the Writers Guild of America to tell us more about these behind the scenes challenges at the heart of the double strikes happening in Hollywood. Jeane Phan Wong is a television and feature film writer who's worked on shows like The CW’s “Arrow” and movies like the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. She's currently a WGA strike captain and serves as a co-chair of the WGA's Committee of Women Writers. Hi, Jeane.
Jeane Phan Wong [00:23:41] Hi. Nice to see everyone today.
Callie Crossley [00:23:43] And Sylvia Franklin is a veteran writer and script coordinator who's worked on episodic television, including Showtime's “The Chi”, ABC's “The Rookie” and Fox's “Prison Break”. She's also served as chair of the WGA Committee of Black Writers and as President of the Organization of Black Screenwriters. Welcome, Sylvia.
Sylvia Franklin [00:24:04] Thank you. Good to be here.
Callie Crossley [00:24:06] Well, let's start this way. I'm curious to hear from each of you. What motivated you to become part of this strike? I'll start with you, Sylvia.
Sylvia Franklin [00:24:14] To sort of reiterate what you said in your opening remarks. This is a historical event. This is a watershed moment in our industry. And we as members of the Writers Guild, we're just not getting the kind of do that we've worked so very hard for.
Callie Crossley [00:24:31] All right. That was a very calm response. I'm imagining when you think this is your blood, your work on the page and pages across many shows, you know, how does that feel to essentially have your work discounted is really what's happening here?
Sylvia Franklin [00:24:47] Well, I think it's indicative of what's sort of happening in the country right now. I think we you know, our union is probably one of the more visible ones, just in terms of everyone has their opinions about Hollywood and the industry and the amount of work that we do. A lot of people just don't know. They don't truly understand how much work goes into creating content at the level and at the expectation that people have in the marketplace. So when we're not valued, when we're not… our contributions aren't respected nor paid for in a way that they should be, it's kind of galling. And yes, I am being calm because that's the only way people seem to hear you.
Callie Crossley [00:25:28] Mm hmm. All right, Jeane. Same question to you again. Personal motivation as well as a professional.
Jeane Phan Wong [00:25:34] I'm slightly a newer member. I'm five years and under, and I was struggling with just making ends meet. I've… knock on wood… I've got contracted to work every year. But for whatever reason, whether things are stressed or not, there are some years I barely make it by, even though I've got an offer of employment every single year. And so for me personally, it was a sense of justice. I think also for me as a woman of color, as an Asian-American, I didn't want to fit into the perspective of being someone who's quiet and just going to take it. You know, my favorite thing I heard someone say was being a badass Asian causing good trouble. And so all of that to me fueled me into being in leadership.
Callie Crossley [00:26:20] How about an experience? I know there's many that you could cite as writers that when you're on that picket line that keeps your motivation, your back straight because you've experienced some things that of course, we don't know from the outside.
Sylvia Franklin [00:26:36] Well. People don't realize that television shows, just the people who are behind everything that you see when you watch it on screen. We're talking about a couple hundred people. At the minimum, it's 200 people. And it all starts with the script. There would be nothing else if there wasn't this blueprint for how things should run, how things should go. And it takes so many people to actually shape it and mold it and get it to the point where it's ready for viewing at a level where people are willing to pay for it. And given where we are with our content and how we consume our content, people are paying for it. And when you work so incredibly hard to meet these incredible deadlines that don't stop, I mean, once you start a television show, and I'm talking network television writers are typically they start working in May, late May, early June. And that train, if you're lucky, it runs through March or April of the following year without a break, except for, you know, the Christmas holidays that we don't go into the new year. There's no break. You don't get a vacation. You work, you get an episode order and you fulfill the order. And everybody else who's on that team, on that crew, you work like, you know, H E double hockey sticks to get it done and there's no stopping. You just have to keep going. And that means you work when you're sick, you work when you're not feeling great, you work when family and personal things happen. You get it done. And I don't think that people realize that when that isn't recognized in the way that it should be. It's really disheartening because you feel like your efforts, your participation, your contributions don't matter. And we know that they do because people still continue to watch television. They continue to go to the movies and, you know, they continue to participate in a social exercise that we all have started to take for granted.
Callie Crossley [00:28:40] Jeane, what would you add to that?
Jeane Phan Wong [00:28:41] I would yes, and that that basically the combination of low weekly pay and shorter durations of employment is one of the big things that we're fighting against and that writing it feels like such an ephemeral, like ungraspable concept, like how do you measure it? And the metaphor I always give people is that especially for TV, I do features too, but for television, it's like building a house that takes a certain number of weeks. A team of expertise. You wouldn't go live in a house where you got the plumbing person to do electricity, right? And I would say it's the same thing for a television show. You have the writers room, you have crew, you have everyone, you have the showrunner leading it all. And even in the writers’ rooms, there are people with their own expertise and the big tech has come in and tried to dismantle something that's been working for almost a century. And like you wouldn't live in a house that was built shoddy in a short amount of time where everyone was overworked, possibly threatening their health. And television is like the same way the showrunners in charge of hundreds of people. And to have writers, you know, work for a short amount of time, lower, weaker pay and expect them to churn out the same product, they're trying to disrupt the system. But I would say to put Bob Iger's words back in his mouth, that is unrealistic.
Callie Crossley [00:30:07] We, as viewers of all these shows have some concept about how streaming platforms work. We know that it's impacted the content that we see, but how much it's changed specifically in that process, We don't understand. We're talking about the residuals. We're talking about the mini rooms, the separated development period, plus the writing. Once the show has picked up, there's a lot of other things that are now being proposed by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that have happened, and they don't want it to happen anymore. So, Sylvia.
Sylvia Franklin [00:30:43] People seem to think you just write a script and all that goes to production. No, it doesn't happen that way. Writers rooms or think tanks. And you have people in there who are trying to solve the problem of creating a world and creating characters and creating a script to tell us over a number of episodes what's going to happen in the lives of these people. I'm a one hour writer, drama writer. So in drama, there's usually 10 to 12 people in the room. What has happened over the years? That number has gone down. So instead of having 10 to 12 people and some of these people are writing teams, 10 to 12 people, you now have like 7 to 8 people. So there's less people to do more work. Also with streaming, in particular, network episode orders are usually 13. The network would order a pilot, it is greenlit, you shoot the pilot and then you get approval from the stakeholders and then you have a focus group to tell you if they liked it or not. So the internal stakeholders take peak. Oh, the numbers are good. The focus groups liked it. They like the concept. We have this need for this particular show on this particular day in our schedule. Let's buy it. And so they order 13 episodes. The first episode episodes been done, the pilot. So now you've got an order for 12 more. Okay, let's hire everybody. Let's lock in our actors from the pilot that's hire a crew, let's hire the writers, and then off you go. And so you spend the first 3 to 6 months just creating the first 4 to 5 episodes. Writing for television means that you're not only developing, you're breaking the story, you're in pre-production on one episode, you're producing it, you're shooting it, and then you're in post-production. This is all happening at the same time. It takes six months, six months to nine months to shoot 6 to 20 episodes, and that's if you get the back nine or the back, whatever order what Netflix has done. They've truncated the process. They've said, Oh, we want all of the scripts now before you you start production. And I think I'll let Jeane come in and tell you what happens after that.
Jeane Phan Wong [00:32:51] Yeah, it's both less people in the room and a shorter amount of time that people are working. And then Netflix has come up creatively to extract like series development from pre greenlit mini rooms, sometimes with just one or two people working, doing the work of like 7 to 10 people. And in addition to these many rooms, hiring less people to do more work and working for shorter amount of time is also there. Having writers of all experience levels work at the same minimum and rate that they had in year one or two. So the equivalent of that of someone who's on the business is, let's say you're a teacher, you have 20 years of experience, you're expected to go back to the salary that you made in year one or two. And a lot of times they just give these offers and they say leave it or take it. So it's a compounded, pressured situation of last week's less people, more work.
Sylvia Franklin [00:33:57] Lots more. Writers aren't working 52 weeks out of the year. Typically we are project based. So once your project is done, you're on to the next one. And for some people, that means if you are now working a truncated schedule where you used to be able to count on employment for at least 6 to 9 months, now we're talking maybe three months, maybe, out of the year. You're constantly looking for work. So if you're not finding the work because there are less jobs being held and again, we're kind of a we're kind of like the NBA. There are literally thousands of people vying for a handful of jobs. And so if you don't have the contacts, if you don't have the network, if you don't have the availability, because some people are signing contracts where they are tied up, you can't look for work. And if you can't look for work, you can't make your minimums in terms of getting health insurance. You can't get any money applied to your pension, so on and so forth. So there's a huge trickle down effect here.
Callie Crossley [00:34:56] So let me be specific for the two of you, because, Jeane, you're Vietnamese Chinese, the child of Vietnam War immigrants. And Sylvia, you're a Black woman, having served as the president of the Organization of Black Screenwriters. If there are fewer spaces and there were always in the past, I guess if you want to describe it as the good old days, fewer of you in the rooms now, what is the double impact that those are my words of having this strike where they're shrinking the process? Jeane, you can start.
Jeane Phan Wong [00:35:28] The data shows that the majority of historically underrepresented writers in both features in TV tend to be those early in their career. The veterans tend to have been here for a decade or so longer. If you have all writers of different experience levels working at the same rate, if they're offering someone who has 20 years experience at the same rate, the pace of one year, one in two, they will not hire historically underrepresented groups as much. The data is there. We have not reached those echelons as much in Hollywood. Like you said, it has that double impact of hurting queer, bipoc and disabled writers. I know we were talking about television, but I want to emphasize that in features. As someone who works in features, some of the abuses we're asking for them to do is to actually pay us because sometimes they'll ask us to work for free. Kind of like as a favor, there's a lot of pre-work and they'll dangle the carrot of getting paid later. That's something you just want to emphasize; we would like to not work for free as well.
Callie Crossley [00:36:32] Sylvia, given the fact that they're shrinking the numbers in the room to begin with, they've changed the process. There are fewer Black writers and writers of color to begin with. What really is at stake here as this process that they are proposing, if it were to come into play?
Sylvia Franklin [00:36:49] Representation, inclusivity, diversity, and, you know, those differences aren't just along racial lines. It's really about other groups who haven't been invited into the process as well. We're talking about people who are older than 50. We're talking about people with you know, Jeane mentioned it before, disabilities. And you don't see people who are represented in the writers room who can speak to those stories and those experiences, who can then put that information into these scripts. And I also wanted to sort of point out that television writers are also producers. So when we don't get the opportunity to get in and rise up through the ranks like you would in a corporate environment, we don't get the experience. We're fighting for the opportunities to stay in the game, to stay in the rooms and to get the experience to then, you know, put what we've experienced in our scripts so people can be hired.
Callie Crossley [00:37:43] Part of the motivation of the strikes, the issue of artificial intelligence. It's a big part of the conversation for many industries. But for yours specifically, there's been talk of A.I. generating scripts. Actors have similar concerns. They're on strike, worried about their likenesses being used instead of hiring them and paying them for more work. What's your perspective on the role of A.I. now, and what do you think about it going forward? Jeane.
Jeane Phan Wong [00:38:12] When I speak to most writers, this is not me speaking in terms of what the negotiating committee or board in terms of strategy, but I think writers just want A.I. with guardrails. Like we want to have it be an actual fruitful discussion. Personally, for me, I think we're sort of at an inflection point. We need to decide as a society what is our role in relation to new technology. And this happens every once in a while in our humanity. And I think we need to decide are we going to value humans or profit? And so, you know, I think we're at the forefront because I think, you know, private equity buying medical practices with medicine, talking about doing patient intake or therapy or pharmacists being replaced by A.I. I think it's a bigger question of what, as we as society want to do about humanity, are we going to value people working? I think it's a really big question. I think it's something that needs to be addressed. And when this was brought up in the negotiating table at the end of April, the AMPTP's literal response was to offer us our yearly meeting. I forget the amount of meetings they said they would offer us. That's the equivalent of you going up to your boss and asking for a raise and then offering you a meeting on the entomology of the word raise and what a raise means, as opposed to actually countering with a number and negotiating with you. That's a clear example of how the AMPTP did not bargain in good faith. The Writers Guild, we're here and we're ready to talk about A.I. We've done years of research on it, and we just want to build in guardrails. And I think as a society, we just need to decide do we value humanity or profits?
Sylvia Franklin [00:39:59] Sylvia I tend to agree with Jeane. We do need guardrails, but you know, there's no discounting that this technology is here. It will never be able to replace humans in terms of our…just our scope of experience and being human. It will never be able to replicate that. However, we can use it as a tool with the appropriate restrictions. It should never have the capability of being able to write the first draft or create the first draft of anything because we're teaching it. You know, the technicians, those of us who are using Chat GPT and the various thousands of other versions of it in the marketplace right now. You know, we're teaching it to basically copy what is already here; information, things, IP that has been already created by human beings. So it cannot create, it can just replicate. And we have to figure out a way to make this work, given what we do and how we can do it better. We just want to work and continue to tell great stories. And, you know, we can use A.I. to help us do that.
Callie Crossley [00:41:02] So describe for us what it's like participating on the picket lines and the strike itself day to day. We don't have a sense of that. Those of us on the outside, we see you picketing various locations. But what is the actual experience, Jeane?
Jeane Phan Wong [00:41:17] It's high, both in a metaphorical sense to have solidarity with fellow unions and now SAG out here with the symmetrical faces. But it's also very just hot, like it's a little bit, you know, dangerous. We have older members in the Guild. As a captain, I'm constantly making sure everyone's hydrated sunscreen and it's tedious work. I know sometimes on social media you look at themed pickets and it looks like we're having fun, but it is not gloating because we writers know the effect this has on other industries, on smaller businesses. And right now, I think there's just like an overwhelming amount of solidarity and morale and that we will be here as long as it takes to get a fair contract.
Callie Crossley [00:42:13] What kind of conversations are you having with other writers while you're out there?
Jeane Phan Wong [00:42:17] Honestly, it just depends. Sometimes I'm just catching up with people I haven't seen in years since the pandemic. So we're talking about our families, our friends. We're talking about how much our hips and backs hurt because I personally am not built to walk in the sun for many hours. I am an introvert who likes to be indoors in the dark and then now with like my actor friends out there, a lot of it's eye catching up, talking to people. And if it's with my fellow captains, we're talking about solidarity, actions and things that we're doing. A lot of times even like safety issues with picketers, we're checking in with everyone, making sure all the dogs are walking the line, have water and treats. It's a little bit of being a camp counselor with a bullhorn, being a captain.
Callie Crossley [00:43:10] Sylvia, for you, what's the picket line experience been like?
Sylvia Franklin [00:43:13] I'll agree with the hot… the hot topics. It's just it's physically very challenging for a lot of people. And I think anybody who's worked outside can attest to that. It's hard work. And when you're out in the sun and you're physically going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth for hours. We're doing this because we want to and we have to. We are visual sort of representation of what's happening in the labor movement in this country. Just over time, our rights have been chipped away a little bit here, a little bit there, but they've been chipped away to such an extent that people can't make a livable wage anymore. People are stressed out just trying to figure out how they're going to make ends meet. And if you have a family. Oh, my God. I mean, it's…it's challenging. And what? What? Being on the lines with other writers and other creative people is it's just a reminder that we're all connected, that we all depend on one another.
Callie Crossley [00:44:19] So I want to ask you about the morale on the picket line. But before you answer that, I want to highlight some of the comments that have been made by anonymous executives from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Here's the one that's really gotten quite a bit of attention. “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” That's what a studio executive anonymously told the publication Deadline. Now, the organization itself came out and said, those anonymous people don't speak for us. We're we're in fact, working for a real deal. But I would imagine that that hit hard while you're out there picketing, Jeane.
Jeane Phan Wong [00:45:04] I think there's been two types of reactions. There's been the Ron Perlman reaction. There's more than one way to lose a house. Anger, righteous anger. And I think there have been those who have just taken it lightly. Hey, joke's on you, AMPTP. We're already broke and losing our houses and apartments. So lots of dark humor, too. And honestly, I think it backfired to them. It was a cruel but necessary evil to make our union, along with the others affected by the strike unhoused. And I think if anything, that just made… trauma bonded us again. And we'll be here as long as it takes. And I think it had the absolute opposite effect of breaking our morale. If anything, it made us more resolved.
Callie Crossley [00:45:54] Sylvia, Jeane, thank you so much for joining me today.
Sylvia Franklin [00:45:57] Thank you.
Jeane Phan Wong [00:45:57] Thank you.
Callie Crossley [00:45:59] That was television and feature film writer and WGA strike captain Jeane Phan Wong and veteran writer and script coordinator and WGA member Sylvia Franklin.
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We are on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms and Rococo Punch. I'm today's host, Callie Crossley. Farai Chideya, Nina Spensley and Shanta Covington are executive producers. Emily J. Daly is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister is our booking producer. Monica Morales-Garcia is our producer. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers. Our fact checker is Nicole Pasulka. This episode was produced by Andrea Asuaje. It was engineered by Mike Garth.
This program is produced with support from the Luce Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, The Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, The Pop Culture Collaborative, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.