The Hollywood actors' strike is already impacting Canada's entertainment industry

24:59The Hollywood actors' & writers' strikes are already impacting Canada's entertainment industry

The ongoing strikes by actors and writers in Hollywood means work is grinding to a halt here in Canada with devastating consequences.

Canadian actor and podcaster Carolina Bartczak and Canadian screenwriter Anthony Q. Farrell sit down with host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about how how the labour dispute is impacting Canada, and why some Canadians in film and TV feel their U.S. counterparts are fighting on their behalf.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Carolina, what a predicament. You've been working on your career. You've been trying to get on this show. You land this show. The show is about to come out … and you can't promote it — can't even talk about it, can't even name it. What is riding on this for you personally?

Carolina: Any time you get a job, it is a massive celebration. It is so hard to actually get work, [and] on a show that you care so deeply about. I've been waiting for this show to come out for two years. They've really postponed the release of it. And as an actor, as the release approaches, you start prepping in a certain way: you hire a PR company, you start looking for hair, makeup and wardrobe for your appearances, you buy flights to L.A. to meet new agents. Really, it's lightning in a bottle. You have to catch the moment while it's happening — and you've got a couple weeks before everyone forgets about the show and watches the next thing.

So when I heard three or four days ago that the strike was happening, my heart absolutely just fell out of my body; I was so, so upset. I've already invested a lot of money into PR, into finding stylists and all this kind of stuff. And also, producers and writers have been working on this show for five, six years. So for their work to culminate in almost nothing is so heartbreaking for them even more.

Elamin: I think something that people don't necessarily understand with the industry is that a lot of planning goes into this two-week period of time where maybe people are talking about the show. We should say you're a member of the Canadian actors' union, not the American union that's currently on strike. But we can't really name the show that you're part of because you want to stay on the right side of the strike restrictions around actors promoting their work. What is it like for you to get to this moment and not be able to get word out about the show?

Carolina: I feel absolutely unsure of what to do. I want to do something, but I can't. And all my colleagues on the show are also not able to do anything. Right now, I'm just sitting here twiddling my thumbs in a bit of a panic, saying, "Oh, God, if the strike ends tomorrow, am I going to be ready to jump back in the game and be ready for the premiere, the appearances?" But then at the same time, I have to be wary of investing more time and more finances into doing so.

Elamin: Because this is your own money. This is not a studio's money.

Carolina: You have to hire your own PR. Red carpets look like a lot of fun, [but] they're a lot of work and they're a lot of stress.

Elamin: Yeah, it's not just the moment where people step on the carpet.

Carolina: When I see people stepping on the carpet, I'm like, "Oh, God, they look amazing. They look like they're having so much fun!" And then I remember what happens behind the scenes, how many people you have to hire to make sure that you look easy, breezy and amazing.

Elamin: Anthony, you were here two months ago and even then, you painted a pretty bleak picture of the impact that the writers' strike was going to have on Canada. Has it gotten worse?

Anthony: There are jobs starting to open up, and there are shows that are starting to happen — but they're Canadian shows, right? Canadian productions are starting to pick up a little bit, so that's some good news. The service work is still pretty much nonexistent. And now with the SAG-AFTRA strike, nothing is going to be able to happen here in Canada. So for the people who would normally work on those shows, they're going to have to rely on unemployment, their savings until we figure out a resolution to this thing. So, it stays bleak until we figure this out, unfortunately.

Elamin: We should explain to people that just because a production is being produced in Canada and using lots of Canadian actors, if it's an American production, likely it has a big American star attached to it. That star can't work. And so therefore, suddenly the production work kind of grinds to a halt, right? That's what we're picturing here.

Anthony: If you're doing a show here in Canada, chances are you're going to be doing it under a SAG contract because those contracts, quite frankly, are better for the actor.

Carolina: They're better, yeah.

Anthony: [It's] better for the actor to do a SAG contract rather than an ACTRA contract because it means that you'll have access to residuals and those different things. And so if they're under that contract, there's a chance that they won't be able to work. Now, the nice thing about the SAG-AFTRA strike is that they are allowing people to work for companies that are not one of these struck companies. So there are still voiceover artists, there's still commercials, there's still certain things that you can do in the union that are not connected to the AMPTP. The writers, we don't really have access; with the WGA, we kind of just work with those people. So we're not doing anything. But at least there is a small outlet for certain members of SAG.

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.

Panel produced by Jess Low.