Without the nearly 10 different Hollywood studios that Los Angeles-based striking writers picket across, some WGA members in East Coast cities turned their attention to shutting down nearby productions at the onset of the strike in May and June, including Andrew Saito, a TV writer and playwright based in New York.
“There aren’t a lot of studios there, so a lot of the focus was on shutting down locations in the various areas of New York [City], in New Jersey, upstate New York, some in Massachusetts [and] in Connecticut,” Saito told TheWrap on the picket line in Los Angeles on Tuesday. “It was a very different strategy and feel just because of the geography and there are fewer of us out there.”
Despite the smaller number of WGA members involved in efforts to close down ongoing productions amid the strike, Saito recalled the “incredible” amount of solidarity at work between writers and other industry members.
“It was basically self-organizing,” Saito continued. “Many of us got up very early to arrive at these locations at 5 a.m. or earlier to get there before the producers and crew got out there.”
East Coast-based productions that were successfully shut down by picketers included the upcoming Billy Crystal Apple TV+ series “Before” as well as Disney+’s “Daredevil: Born Again,” Max’s “The Penguin,” “Power Book II: Ghost” and “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School.”
The group’s mission did not always go to plan, however, as industry members aligned with the studios attempted to intervene. “We would get the misinformation — false call times would be leaked and publicized by the producers,” Saito said.
“Our efforts in both cities, definitely in the production pickets would have been for naught, if not for the incredible, often unwavering solidarity by the members of our sister unions IATSE and the Teamsters,” Saito said. “These were people, women and men and nonbinary people, who chose to forgo a day, a week, several months of employment of wages to not cross [a picket].”
Saito also noted the possibility of IATSE going on strike when their contract with the AMPTP is up for renewal next year, adding that should the union go on strike, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA “need to have their back.”
As the WGA nears on their 100th day of the strike, Saito also recalled the solidarity felt across the guilds when SAG-AFTRA members came out in huge numbers before their strike had started to support the WGA, adding that “some actors really took real risks in the face of their employers.”
“We’re at this point where it feels like it’s billionaires against everyone else,” Saito said, noting a NPR segment he heard earlier in the day suggesting “the dream of a of a prosperous middle class life” is “so out of reach of us.” “It does feel like warfare by the super rich.”
For all of TheWrap’s WGA strike coverage, click here.
