William Stanford Davis has been acting for decades yet receives a pittance of residuals.
“I’ve been a screen actor for 35 years. I’ve been in the guild about 32 years and I’ll let this speak for itself,” the Abbott Elementary star, 71, said in a Friday, July 21, Instagram video, in which he held up a residual paycheck.
Davis, who portrays custodian Mr. Johnson on the ABC sitcom, revealed that he earned a total sum of $0.05 for an undisclosed rerun of a past TV show he appeared on. “You see that? Can you believe that? That’s [five] cents,” he added. “The postage, the paper, everything costs more than that. That’s what they think of us as actors. This is why we’re on strike for better wages, for better residuals [and] for a piece of the subscription and to not give in to AI.”
Fran Drescher, the president of the SAG-AFTRA union, announced earlier this month that the board authorized a strike after the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) did not agree to any of their terms during contract negotiations. The guild — which represents unionized TV and film actors in the United States — is seeking fair compensation in terms of salaries and residual amounts as well as specific guidelines regarding other issues, including the use of artificial intelligence of performers’ likenesses.
Drescher, 65, later told CBS Mornings on Wednesday, July 19, that the negotiations have stalled since the strike began. “I wish we would be talking to the other side,” the Nanny alum claimed. “We said we’d start talking to them immediately, but they’re punishing us. They don’t want to talk to us, so, oh well, you know, they complained [the strike] is going to shut down the business but they don’t come to the table. … I think stonewalling is their preferred technique. That’s what we are up against.”
William Stanford Davis Courtesy of William Stanford Davis/Instagram
Many actors have since joined the picket lines in both Los Angeles and New York City to show their support, while others have shared their residuals as further evidence of why they are striking.
“Ours is a fickle industry and in my 20+ years of being a performer, my career has ebbed and flowed. I’ve had very lean years where I couldn’t get a job and those are precisely the moments when in years past, actors could rely on residuals from their past work to help them get by,” Mandy Moore wrote via her Instagram on Wednesday, noting she’s received checks for $0.81 for repeat viewings of the Emmy-winning hit drama This Is Us. “The world and business have changed and I’m hoping we can find a meaningful solution moving forward.”
Davis, for his part, noted on Friday that he is striking “until we get what we need to make a living as actors.”
He also captioned his post: “There ain’t nothing funny about a .03¢ residual check! What are we supposed to do with that?”