SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher addressed critics who called out a photo of her and Kim Kardashian taken in Italy that was posted days before the union’s contract deadline with the AMPTP, explaining that she was on a contract job with Dolce & Gabbana which she called “absolute work.”
“I am a brand ambassador for a fashion company and so is Kim. I had only met Kim seconds before that publicity pic was taken. It had nothing to do with being at a party or having fun, it was absolute work,” Drescher replied when asked about the photo during the SAG-AFTRA press conference on Thursday. “I was in hair and makeup three hours a day, walking in heels on cobblestones. Doing things like that, which is work. Not fun.”
“I’m sure Kim would have rather been at her home in Malibu with her children too,” she continued. But we work, that’s what we do. And at 10:30 p.m. at night, I would leave the event. I would go to my hotel room and I call into the Zoom. And when I couldn’t get through to them because I was on a plane. I was texting with them constantly throughout the plane ride. I worked around the clock in three different time zones because my parents live in Florida, so I keep asking them to move here, and I manage their well-being as well. So you know I think that all of the people standing behind me stand behind me.”
Critics of the photo, which was posted to Kardashian’s Instagram account, questioned the optics of Drescher posing at a party with the deadline looming. Back in May, Kardashian crossed the picket line of striking WGA members to film “American Horror Story,” adding fuel to the fire.
Before Drescher responded to the question, SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland stepped in and called the criticism “despicable.”
“What Fran was doing was Fran was working, which is what our members do,” he explained. “And for these employers to cynically try to turn our members against Fran because she’s doing a job that she was under contract to do while by the way, she was zooming into our negotiations after work hours working 18 hours or more a day. It is outrageous. It is wrong. It’s despicable, and they should be ashamed of it.”
On Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA authorized its members to strike, beginning Thursday at midnight.
Watch the press conference below: