Steve Carell gave a masterclass in solidarity during the Writers Guild strike of 2007

Few events have impacted the course of television history quite like the Writers Guild of America's strike of 2007.

12,000 screenwriters joined picket lines in Los Angeles and New York as the Writers Guild of America pushed back against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on issues including pay for work that's distributed via the internet and other new media. It was the industry's first strike in over a decade, and it lasted for 100 days.

During that time, many productions tried to continue working. One such show was the now-cult classic American sitcom The Office, starring Steve Carell.

TV writer, producer and director Michael Schur is the mind behind hits such as Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Good Place. At the time of the strike, he was a writer on The Office. He told Elamin Abdelmahmoud about what it was like on the ground – and how Steve Carell refused to cross the picket line.

We've included an excerpt below. For the full conversation, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: You've been on all of these shows, but way back in 2008, you had to put down your pen. You were a writer on The Office. What do you remember about that moment of suddenly finding out, "this is happening, we are going on strike."?

Michael: It was a very confusing time that became a very clarifying time because I didn't know, honestly, a whole lot about the Writers Guild. I didn't know a lot about how unions functioned in Hollywood. I'd never really paid attention, in part because I'd never had to. The last strike had been in the late eighties when I was in middle school or something. So, I remember being a little bit confused about what it all meant and why it was happening. And then as I began to learn about it, it became more and more clear to me that this was a really big deal — this was an important moment. 

I have since learned that this sort of happens every 15-ish years. Negotiations go from like, "we want more money for the pension fund, for the health fund, we want certain things about workplace safety," whatever, to every 15 years, something has so fundamentally shifted that the union — and all Hollywood unions — have to kind of make a stand. And it became clearer and clearer that this was that moment because the Internet had started becoming really important. We were being futurist about it and thinking, "okay, if we look five, ten years down the road — if we don't do something about this right now, we are in danger of letting this entire medium get away from us." So, by the time it was actually the day to strike, I was extremely pro-strike and extremely pro-union, and was very grateful to be working with a lot of people who felt the same way.  

"This is what they always do when a new technology comes out."

Elamin: The last strike before that was 1988, so you're right, about 15-20 years just before the 2008 strike. What's interesting to me is the fact that this is recurring, tells us that there's something about the condition of being a Hollywood writer that you're just constantly responding to the way the industry changes, and it is in fact the job of the union to sort of think through, "you know what, this is where we got to draw the line." How do these issues come alive for you when you're a writer in 2007, 2008, and you were suddenly aware, "you know what, these issues do matter to me and to my future as a writer."?

Michael: The strike in 2007 and 2008 was entirely about the Internet, and what was made very clear to us was this is a new technology, but this argument and this fight have happened before. They happened in '88, and in '88 it was DVDs. What had happened was there was a new technology and it was like, well, how are power writers and actors and directors and and other folks going to get paid, thanks to this new technology? And the attitude of the companies was, "we don't really know what this is. This is a new thing. We don't know if there's any money in it, so we're not going to pay you now. Let's wait and see, and once we have a handle on what it all means, then we'll figure out how to pay you." And every time that had happened — VHS tapes, and then DVDs and all this stuff — we had said, "okay, yeah, that makes sense." And then, they had made billions and billions and billions of dollars, and we had been scrambling to play catch up, and just at the moment where we were like, "wait a second, please give us money for DVD sales," they were like, "okay, fine, you can have three cents for every 200 million DVDs that we sell." 

And it was irrelevant anyway because a new technology had emerged. And so the folks running the union made a very good argument that this is what they always do when a new technology comes out: they say that they don't understand it, they can't pay us because it's not clear what it will mean, then they make ungodly sums of money and by the time we get a tiny little piece of it, they have moved on to the next technology and then they make the same argument. So, to me what became clear was, no one here is naive. We all understand that TV, movies, these are places where art meets commerce, and no one is under any illusion that this is purely an artistic endeavor. We understand it's a business. However, in the moments where these contracts are being negotiated, it was the case in every year previously that the commerce overwhelmed the art, to the point where the art became almost irrelevant. And we were sort of making a stand and saying, "hey, we're the ones who make this stuff, we create something out of nothing. Whatever this emerging technology is, we deserve to share in whatever spoils it creates. And if it creates no spoils, then we get nothing." But we just felt like we should get in on the ground floor.

Steve Carell breaches his contract for the cause

Elamin: So I want to [talk about] the very first episode to get filmed of The Office after the strike was over — a legendary episode at this point, that is "Dinner Party." Steve Carell had refused to cross the picket line. Can you just describe to us what he was like, the dynamic on set or I guess on the picket line immediately after that?

Michael: So that episode is called "Dinner Party" and it was, I would say in the time I was there — I was there for the first four plus years — it was the best table read we had ever had. The readthrough for that was hard to describe: it was like the TV comedy-equivalent of a mosh pit. It was just wall-to-wall, guttural, explosive laughter. So we read that right before the strike, and then the strike happened, and then you know, the writers were outside. We picketed our own show, which was sort of a bit unusual. But it was, in our mind, a sign of unity. It was like, "we love this thing and we want to be here while this is happening." And the actors were all incredibly sympathetic. 

We weren't allowed to, obviously, do any creative work on the show, and they all felt very guilty about the fact that they had to make something in a different way from the way that we usually make it, which was the writers and Greg Daniels, who was the showrunner, were extremely involved. We were on the set, we were collaborative, we would rewrite things, pitch things, improvise things, whatever. So Steve didn't show up to work that day, and a couple of the other actors did, but Steve didn't. And he was called and said like, "hey, are you coming into work?" And he was like, "yeah, I don't think so. I like the way our show works. It involves writing, and if the writers can't be there, then I don't want to make the show." And technically speaking, he was in breach of contract, right? 

Because he was an actor; he might have been in the Guild by that point, but he wasn't technically doing any writing. So he started getting all this pressure. Executives called him from the network and the studio, people extremely high up the corporate food chain, like people with "Chairman" and "CEO" in their job description, but he just had this incredible calm where he just was like, "we make this show a certain way, and if we can't make it the way we want to make it, I don't think we should do it. So, no, I'm not going to come in to work." And Greg kept checking in with him. I remember him being like, "hey, I'm so sorry about this. You're being put in this position. Are you okay?" And I remember him saying, "oh, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just hanging out with my kids." Like, he was completely unperturbed. 

Elamin: Not worried about the consequences.

Michael: No, and for a couple of reasons. Number one is, he was a little bit calling their bluff because okay, yes, technically he's in breach of contract. What are you going to do, fire Steve Carell off of The Office? Like, come on, let's get real. But also, he is just a person of incredible integrity. We faced a number of corporate decisions over the length of that show, and in every instance, he chose the path of integrity. That's just who he is as a person, and it's how he behaved in that moment, and it was so inspiring and great, it gave all of the other actors and writers a spring in their step. The story of how he had just decided not to come to work that day, essentially, to support the concept of the role of writing and making television, spread like wildfire and in those weird, early hours and days of the strike where the writers were doing something we're not used to doing, which is marching around studios with picket signs, his story became incredibly inspiring and people really took a lot of heart in his decision.

"That's not the kind of behavior you normally expect from a giant star."

Elamin: That's beautiful. For you, watching all of that, did that shift anything about what you bring to work, how you wanted to run your own writers rooms, how you wanted to run your own sets?  

Michael: Yeah, 100 per cent. I mean, starting with the fact that it really clarifies something which Steve had already demonstrated, but which really became clear in that moment, which is that the folks at the top — as they say, number one on the call sheet, the star actor of any show, that person sets the tone for the show on set. That's the point guard, right? That is the captain of the team we're in regarding everything involving the actual production of the show. And to have a person like that as the number one on the call sheet who sets that kind of example … when Steve left the show, we had a party for him after he wrapped and Greg asked people to go around and tell stories just about like Steve and what kind of person he was, and a woman who is, I believe, a makeup artist told the story, I think about this all the time, that when they were getting into a van to go to a [filming] location, she said, "I'm so sorry, but would you mind terribly, Steve, if I took the front seat? I have a bad back." And he was like, "no, of course." And so she sat in the front seat, and then when they got out wherever they were going, he picked up her heavy makeup crate and carried it for her. And for the next seven years or whatever it was, every time they got into a van, if someone sat in the front seat, he would very quietly go up and say, "would you mind actually sitting in the back so that my makeup artist can take the front seat?" And then every single time they got to where they're going, he carried her makeup crate for her. What was amazing about this was, first of all, that's not the kind of behavior you normally expect from a giant star.  

Elamin: From the number of one person on the call sheet.

Michael: But also and more importantly, no one else had even known it was happening. He had been so quiet and subtle about it that it was a surprise to every single person who had worked on this show. And what I took from that, and from his behavior during the strike, was there is no substitute for that kind of quiet leadership, that kind of quiet integrity at the top of the food chain. It really sets the tone for everyone else who works on the show. If the most famous and most highly-paid person on a TV show or a movie behaves like that, there is no room for anyone else to do anything other than to behave like that, and that's so meaningful and so important for the creative process.

Elamin: You know what? Steve Carell was already in everybody's good books, but I think that just made his stock go way higher. That's a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing that.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.